


Piano Breath

by Neurtsy



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Ballet Dancer Harry, Bottom Louis, Dom Harry, Dom/sub, Drinking, Football Player Louis, Sub Louis, Subspace, Top Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:07:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 51,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3717994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurtsy/pseuds/Neurtsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It never stops raining in Manchester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeranigans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeranigans/gifts).



> come bother me on tumblr https://www.tumblr.com/blog/neurtsy ~  
>  
> 
> Please no one sue me over copyright. There are better things to do with your time. 
> 
> Comment your little hearts out. 
> 
>  
> 
> playlist:
> 
> Low Roar's self titled album serves as the overall ambience of the story. 
> 
>  
> 
> Louis' theme: Be Still - The Killers
> 
>  
> 
> Harry's theme: Can't Pretend - Tom Odell
> 
>  
> 
> Sway, Sway - Heinali
> 
>  
> 
> Debate Exposes Doubt - Death Cab For Cutie
> 
>  
> 
> Messy Hearts - Moon Ate The Dark
> 
>  
> 
> Patience - Low Roar
> 
>  
> 
> Roll credits: Don't Look Back in Anger - Oasis

Practice is dragging, the back of Louis’ mind chanting _worth it, worth it,_ but the front of it is a dull moan, cursing the tedious drills.  
As a newcomer, it’s partnered with a mild case of peer isolation, but he pushes himself through it. 

It’s a strange relief when the whistles blow, and their trainers send them off to run laps.  
The team scatters, most bunching into groups while others take off solo. Louis hangs back, finds his pace. Each footstep falling in time to his pulse, faster, steadier until he hits that place, the intense focus of the strip before him, and the blur and distortion of everything, everyone else. 

 

The changing room and showers are always a din of chaos after practices, so Louis stalls - not eager to leave the thrill and physical burn of the match. Taking his time warming down, he loosely jogs the last laps, and watches his teammates meander off the grass and head inside.  
The slow crawl of bodies off the pitch is a constant movement along his peripherals as he circles the loop. The motion of his feet against the track becomes a steady drawl, his heartbeat making itself at home in his ears and urging his body forward, keeping time like a metronome.

He slows to a walk when the sun's a little lower in the sky. Finally heading in, the changing room is empty, the dim lighting of the showers an unabashed invitation.

His legs are aching. He imagines the stiffness and pain as a quietly voiced complaint; his body's way of whining. He rolls his shoulders and watches the beads of water roll off of them in turn. Watches the sweat and stains disappear down the drain in a slow spiral of effort and exhaustion. Tilting his head into the spray, he closes his eyes against the soft sting and reaches blindly to turn the dial up.

He stands like that until his skin is red and angry looking, and his head a little quieter. 

 

Outside the pitch is silent, save for the distant thrum of cars echoing back against the brick buildings. It's almost enough to bring on the thrill of performance, the near-panicked rush as things twist inside stomachs. But the stillness in the empty sidelines ruins the illusion. Without the motion catching the corners of his eyes, or the sounds of cheers, shouts, leers to push doubt and distraction into his head, there's nothing to drive him to and over the edge of excitement. Silence and solitude have never been the audience he likes to play for. Too much quiet, and the only thing left to focus on is himself.  
He's not sure if he likes that many eyes on only him. Too much expectation without company. Something.

 

He takes a taxi back to his apartment with the window down, letting the cool air dry and tangle his damp hair into something disastrous. He types out a quick tweet, tagging a few teammates, _'first practice since the break - going to be feeling it tomorrow!'_

 

The first text comes once he's sprawled out on his couch, nursing a vitamin water in a wine glass in an attempt to fool himself, half watching the news and half asleep. 

_'Take it easy footie star! Love you! xoxo'_  
His mum, of course - a newly recruited defense player hardly has an army of fans. Homesickness battles out any disappointment that could have registered at the lack of receiving a reaction or recognition. 

He catches himself smiling as he types out a quick message, just checking in, adding in a few football emojis for good measure. 

 

The second text comes as he's heading to bed, pointedly ignoring the ever growing pile of dishes in his kitchen sink, and stepping around the puddles of laundry collecting on his floor.  
The number isn't familiar. That combined with the hour is almost enough to make him leave it. Almost, but not quite.

But late evenings after a day of training with the team only ever seem to lead to staying awake researching his player stats on professional team blogs. Last check he was still the lowest ranking player, but some sports critic _had_ noted that he _'had potential.'_  
The bland criticisms only ever lead him to fixation, and trying to make up for it by pushing himself too far. The process only cancels out the talent that he does have - _knows_ he has, to lead to more negative reviews.  
An endless cycle he knows gets him nowhere, and he’s too tired for self abuse, so opens the message from the unfamiliar number.

_'Hi Louis, it's Liam. We haven't really been in touch since first year of college, but I saw that you were back in town, and was just wondering if you had any free time available in between practices.'_

Louis stares at his phone for a while, processing. Finally, he gets into bed, relishing in the stretch beneath the covers. 

 

_Hi Louis, it's Liam._ He rereads the message. _Since the first year of college._ Chewing on his bottom lip, he hesitantly types out a response.  
_'Good to hear from you! I'm on lockdown for training every afternoon until about nine. What did you have in mind?'_ He stares at his message with a slight frown before sending. The reply is almost immediate.  
_'Working on a project with a mate from school. We're doing portraits and interviews with athletes for an art study. Think you might be interested?'_

Louis blinks. It wasn't exactly the response he had been expecting. _Portraits? Art studies?_ He flicks through his contact list, trying to decide if it's the same person he thinks it is. Finally, he pulls his laptop out from under his bed, opening Facebook. 

 

The Liam he remembers from college has vanished, lost somewhere amid broad shoulders and sculpted stubble, and paired with people he's never seen before and the name of an art school that Louis knows the general location of, but beyond that barely recognizes. 

_'What would I have to do?'_ he types out quickly, still scanning over the pictures the other has made public. The weight of practice and the late hour has his vision blurring, eyelids pulling down.

The buzz of his phone pulls him away from the screen a moment later, and it’s an effort to refocus his eyes, the bright glare of his phone hostile in the dark.

_'Just a bit of modeling and talking about footie? If you can't, maybe someone else on your team would?'_ There's a slight sting with that. Then another message immediately: _but it'd be lovely to see you again, whether or not you sign up!_ That's more familiar territory, more confirming memories of the boy he knew, and Louis clicks his laptop closed and drops it to the floor with an ungraceful clatter. 

_'Sounds interesting. Maybe we could meet for coffee some morning?'_ His phone is lighting up with a reply before he has time to adjust himself comfortably under the duvet.

_'Definitely. Tomorrow? I know a great little café!'_


	2. Chapter 2

Morning comes sooner than Louis would have liked, sunlight flicking lazily through the gaps in his blinds and staining his walls a brighter shade of blue. Getting out of bed, he winces, stretching his arms up and out, and feeling the tug and faint sear as he does the same with his legs. 

He flicks on the kettle next, and goes toward the shower, meaning to get in and out quickly, but the warm water seduces his body. He lets himself become trapped under the stream, finally getting out, getting dried off and dressed in a flurry. His hair is inexcusable, sticking up and out at bizarre angles, and by the time he's got it patted down and rearranged into something more tolerable, the kettle's gone cold, and it's only just registering that he's going out and didn't need to turn it on in the first place.

 

Still shaking off the stale thoughts of an absentminded waker, he tracks down a cab and pulls the address up on his phone. Some little indie place, a few blocks down from the big streets.

The buildings along the way seem pushed up to the very edges of the pavement, all flat roofed, dull colours of peeling paint in reds and muted blues. 

Just as he finds the place - cozy and cottage like, brick faced with a low hanging balcony - his phone buzzes, _‘got us a booth at the back!’_

 

Louis finds his way inside, winding amid haphazardly arranged tables with mismatched dishes and flower-printed tablecloths. A man waves him over, all thick torso and finely groomed beard. The only familiar thing about him is the steady warmth in his eyes, and then, upon reaching the table, the feel of his hand gripping Louis’. 

“Great to see you, mate. It’s been too long.” The handshake turns into a hug as Liam slides his way out of the booth and stands, engulfing Louis in his burly frame. Louis let himself be manhandled and pushes into the booth next. 

“Yeah, it’s good to see you too,” he says honestly, watching Liam slide in next to him. “You look so much different,” he adds, laughing. Liam looks down at himself, patting his chest.  
“Yeah, bulked up a bit since college. All that lugging around filming equipment paid off,” he replied. “This is Zayn, by the way,” he motions to Louis’ other side. “He’s the talent behind the project.” 

Louis turns, feeling slightly dizzy as he faces the stranger seated next to him. The man is all edges and dark eyes, slipping an arm out to extend to Louis’, shaking it quietly then drawing back, like a serpent. 

“Hi,” Louis manages, looking back to Liam for some sort of explanation. “Sorry, Liam didn’t really give me many details. Talent?” He prompts, bargaining with his tongue for some sort of cooperation. 

“It’s a form study,” Zayn says after a moment of studying Louis’ surely flushing face. His voice is low and melodic, slow and surely not stumbling over words. “I’m filling out my portfolio, and Liam needed something to film..” Louis sits listening between them, fingers nervously hammering out an uneven beat.

“I was looking for a topic for a documentary to work on, something I could use in my presentation for a job interview in the spring. The academy is taking on new choreographers and editors for their fall performances..” Liam trails off, waving a hand vaguely as if Louis knows all about it. He nods along as if he does. 

 

“So, you’re an artist then?” Louis asks, turning to face Zayn a beat too late to call it smooth. Zayn nods thoughtfully, eyes somehow both watchful and unfocused, looking towards the scattered tables and large wooden hatstands propped up near the entrance. He raises a hand to card through his hair, fine and black against his fingers. The gesture is effortless and impatient. 

“Painting, mostly. Bit of sculpture,” he says. Louis follows his gaze around the restaurant. Strings of lights run along the edges, casting coloured patches of light and shadow, and framed paintings littered the walls - all abstract and vibrant, almost violent splashes of red and yellow. 

_“Actual_ painting,” Zayn says, watching with a dark and amused expression as Louis’ eyes quickly snap back to face him. 

 

“And you want me?” Louis asks, scrambling to clarify as Zayn cocks an eyebrow. “You - you want me as a model?” 

“Zayn brought up the idea of doing a specialized form study on different types of athletes - well, the different muscular style of certain types of athletes, and I thought it would be an interesting topic for my documentary. We’ve been in contact with several people who engage in a variety of different activities. But we don’t have a footballer,” Liam pauses to smile winningly at Louis, and, presumably, to breathe. “Scrolling through my twitter feed and seeing that you were back in town was just perfect timing, really. Would you think about it?” Louis blinks, feeling a bit dazed at the sudden onslaught of information. 

“So the focus is on Zayn then? Not the, uh, subjects?” He glances between the two for confirmation.  
“The focus is on _art,_ so the _artist_ is obviously going to be on camera quite a bit,” Liam says, his voice light and teasing. “We’d need to do a few basic interviews with our athletes...bit of backstory, bit of talk about their sport - for some depth,” he continues. “There would be a lot of standing around, posing, boring stuff really. What do you think?” Louis opens his mouth to answer, hesitates, and closes it again. 

“If timing is an issue, we’d gladly work out something that fits around your schedule,” Liam presses, smiling pleasantly at Louis’ expression - still dazed and following his words with wide eyes. 

“Alright,” Louis hears himself say, and watches Liam’s smile spread, reaching his eyes.  
“Brilliant!” Liam announces, clapping a hand against the glass tabletop, and making Louis jump, cracking a smile.

“We’ve just about finished getting people on board with the project,” Liam goes on to explain, smiling along with Louis. “Zayn’s already done a few practice pieces, and we wanted to start filming as soon as possible. Let me know what days you’d be free - “ he pulls a calendar notebook and pencil out of nowhere - “and we’ll write you in.”

A waiter stops by their table and they order their drinks, giving Louis a brief moment to collect and compose his thoughts. 

“Right, okay, well my practices start at one and usually go to about eight or nine? That’s on weekdays.” Liam nods, eyebrows creasing slightly as he examines his schedule.

“What would work better for you, mornings, later evenings or weekends? Obviously you’ll want some time off to yourself with all of this. Team practices must get a bit intense.” Louis shrugs, nodding.  
“Yeah, I guess.. I’m usually pretty worn out afterwards. So, mornings I guess?” Liam gives him a sideways glance, tapping the paper with the eraser end of his pencil.  
“Don’t remember you being much of a morning person,” he says, voice teasing.  
“I’m really not,” Louis admits, picking at a cuticle. “Maybe not first thing? How much time do you need per session?” He turns in his seat, looking to Zayn.

“Depends on the day,” Zayn answers ambiguously. “And the style. Could just do something quick as a reference in twenty minutes or so, but I usually like to do more detailing.”  
“An hour or two?” Liam prompts, smiling at the artist over Louis’ head. “He gets pretty absorbed in his work,” he adds, tossing a wink in Louis’ direction.

“So, ten or eleven? Something around there?” Louis asks.  
“Sounds good. And we planned on doing most of these in the studios over at the academy,” Liam continues. “We’ll pay for a cab if you need a ride, not sure how out of your way the campus is.”  
“That’s no problem, I’m only a few blocks away,” Louis says. “Takes me longer to get to the training complex, actually.” Liam makes a face.  
“Mm, must be a nice drive every day..”  
“Takes up to an hour with the traffic some days.” Liam offers a sympathetic noise. 

 

Setting up dates that match with both of their schedules takes some time between Liam’s enthusiastic stream of information and Louis’ head still feeling thick and fuzzy. Finally organized, Louis’ tea is cool enough to drink comfortably, easing out his stiff posture and most of his tension.

“Would you pose nude?” Zayn asks after a beat of silence, taking a drink, long fingers holding the cup gently, a smear of ink decorating the inside of two. The panic nearly registers before the words do, and Louis flinches, jarring a knee against the underside of the table.

_“What?_ I didn’t think - “  
“It’s not a requirement,” Liam laughs, placing a hand gently on the small of his back. Louis jerks away from it anyway.

“No, no sorry I really don’t think...” Zayn flicks a hand, silencing him.  
“It’s fine. The studio has a separate listing of nude models we can request.”

“We were expecting you to disagree,” Liam picks up, shooting Zayn an amused glance. “That’s all of you in the project, I mean.” Louis swallows and nods, running his hands down the length of his thighs.  
“So...that’s not a problem then?” 

“Of course not. There will be some state of undress required - I thought that much would have been obvious from the request - but nothing obscene.” Liam hesitated, taking in the doubt crossing Louis’ face. “Shirt off, shorts or just pants - nothing too revealing, so long as Zayn’s got enough leg and torso to keep him happy.” Zayn makes a noise that could have been a laugh.

“Right...okay, yeah that’d be...” Louis clears his throat.  
“Excellent!” Liam raises his coffee mug to meet the rim of Louis’ with a light clink, leaning over to offer the same to Zayn, who shoots him down with the raise of a dark eyebrow. 

“So we’re happy with him then, Zayn?” Liam asks, undeterred, smile light and teasing, and Louis glances over towards the artist.

Zayn looks at him, looks into him, and Louis feels himself falling, head over heels, sea sick and helpless, captivated in the clinquant gaze. Muted heat spreads through his face, cheeks tinting pink from the scrutiny, but he can’t tear away from the stare, the intensity. He sits frozen, held in Zayn’s upturned palm, resting between his lips, over his tongue, being swallowed down, down.  
Trapped inside the belly of something large and terrible, eaten, devoured.

And then he is spat out. 

“He’ll do.” The words are accompanied by a shrug, and Louis picks at his cuticles with blunt nails, stomach knotted and dropping.

Liam’s laughter, rich and warm, breaks the silence and smooths out the atmosphere, and Louis meets Zayn’s eyes, darkly secretive, glinting with amusement.

“Thanks for being a part of this,” Zayn says, suddenly all sly smile and slithering hand wrapping around Louis’ own in his lap, squeezing gently in an intimately formal gesture.


	3. Chapter 3

The week floods by in a whirl of the plastic smell of the track and so many pairs of rubber soles, heavy and fake and all-encompassing. It flashes past like trees outside a car window, forehead pressed to glass, until the eventuality of eyes only registering _green, green, green,_ but without the weight of travel. The shade that blurs behind Louis’ eyes as his head meets pillow is the imitation green of the indoor field, not a comfort but a familiarity, and his mind wanders and finally fades. 

Drawn in beneath the covers, his dreams replay the constant occupants of his days, the laminated sheen of polyester, thick calves, and the strain, push, drive of it all. 

 

And he wakes alert, unlike himself and unsure of the change at first, of why this day feels different after his routine of so much sameness. But then it registers, vibrant enough to almost have its own sound and smell, something sharp and snapping, firecrackers, the danger of smoke. It rushes at him in quick images, Liam’s hand firm and spreading around the expanse of his arm, Zayn’s fingers, streaked with something sooty and black, and his own body, tangled in bedsheets, muscles a faint ache as they still clutch on to the sanctuary of sleep. 

 

* * *

 

Louis leaves the house, tucking his keys into his pocket, where they are accompanied by a mild case of nerves and a glance at the directions in his hand - written by Liam, so fastidiously explained, obnoxiously neat.

The walk over is quiet. The morning light through the trees shines down deceitfully, bathing the streets in gold as the air bristles, lungs stiff in late waking. Louis makes his way through the campus, feet listless and mind lagging, a slow waker and unaccustomed to this backwards position of where the sun sits in the sky, feeling blue and far away. 

 

The building lies in wait like a daydream, the inside all pastel colours and festering ideas. The air feels hollow, open and echoing, the stories above built over a wide auditorium. There’s a low purr of old piping, and the electric hush of people working behind doors cracked open. Pages sprawling languidly over tabletops and computers humming along to the rhythmic press of ink to paper, and percussion of fingers on keys. 

A staircase winds up lazily, blue glass windows parting at angles to let in a breeze, and the upper floors seem breathy and almost eerie in their cool silence. 

 

The walls inside are white, whiter with the sunlight cast in through the windows, two meters tall and curtainless, making it near-blinding and startlingly stark. 

Stepping further inside, the room became an industrial greenhouse. Two and three tiered baskets of aloe vera hang from the exposed piping that ran above their heads, and the broad windowsill lining a wall of the room holds a collection of tiny potted cacti, bared and startling in the morning light. 

 

High ceilinged and practically devoid of furniture, the few pieces of colour bark out in alarming contrast - rectangularly framed art along the far wall, a paint streaked fabric bag pooling on the floor beside an easel, and a high legged square table. Keeping them company in the vacant room are pieces of black filming equipment, standing stock-still like machine soldiers.

 

“Louis! Good morning!” Liam’s voice comes to him from behind a camera, mounted at face-level on a tall tripod.  
“Hi,” Louis greets, walking hesitantly across the room. He finds Zayn sitting on a stool behind the easel, out of sight from the door, a comically oversized sketchbook on his lap, and he looks at Louis with a dark, calculating look that eases into a soft smile. 

“Good to see you,” he says, voice silky and low. Louis smoothes out the edges of his hair with his fingers, standing uncertainly in front of the two.

“So...what’s going to happen?” Louis asks, letting his eyes shift to the stilted table. Scattered across the surface lay slabs of paint, small murky jars and an opened roll of red-handled paint brushes. A tin can holds a handful of charcoal pencils, and on the ledge of the easel is a toothbrush, bristles grungy, splayed out, and clumped together with pasty grey paint.

“Have you done any sort of posing before?” Liam questions, twisting a dial on his camera minutely.  
“No...not really. Just like, group pictures and stuff. Never anything like this,” Louis glances down at himself, suddenly so aware of his clothing.  
“You won’t have to be completely statue-still, just keep everything more or less in the same place. You should see the way Zayn posed some of the dancers...absolutely insane.” Louis watches an evil smile threaten to spread across the artist’s face as Liam continues.

“He asked one of our girls - ballet - to arch a leg up backwards, with her head in between her shoulder blades...” a dry snort from Zayn, “and I ended up having to rig up this metal pole to prop her leg up and hold her in position, because Mr. High and Mighty over here wanted a full two hour session.”

“Well there wouldn’t have been any point in having a boring stance. It would have been a waste of flexibility,” Zayn counters, watching as entertained disbelief crosses Liam’s face.  
_“‘Waste of flexibility?’_ Honestly. You were just being impossible.” Liam shakes his head, shifting his camera to one hand and cuffing Zayn on the shoulder. “Have you thought about how you want to have it today?”

Louis crosses his arms across his chest, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he watches them talk. 

“I want to start with getting a basic outline,” Zayn is speaking in a quiet tone to Liam, gesturing with a dry brush. “Just get his shape, like a science book replica.”  
“So standing, facing you?”  
“Yeah, then one from the side.”  
“You want to work on two different pieces, or both angles on one?”  “Just going to start with one sketchbook page, then pick out the details on the canvas.”  
“Alright. I’ll run one on you and time lapse whatever you get done today, then have this on real time,” he taps the camera in his hand, “and put the narration over that.”  
“Cool,” Zayn is nodding along, getting his brushes out and lining them up along the edge of his easel. 

Louis flicks his eyes between the two, following their conversation. It’s casual, tipping over into domestic with relaxed and informal mannerisms, and entirely undiagnosable from where he stands, an obvious outsider. 

 

Finally, Liam breaks the illusion they had spun, completely enveloped in their own world, and motions towards Louis.  
“Alright Louis, if you could just strip we’re all set to get started,” Liam says, smiling pleasantly. Behind him and off to the side, Zayn’s expression is less than friendly, eyes golden in the light and carnivorous with their intent. Stage fright scrambles to take hold of Louis’ fingers, and he fumbles with the hem of his sweater, finally hauling it over his head with a static ripple. His shirt follows quickly, and Liam hums an appreciative noise, Louis glancing up in surprise.

“Didn’t know you had a tattoo,” Liam says, taking a step closer. Zayn’s eyes are scanning languidly over Louis’ chest and abdomen, and Louis finds it easier to pretend to focus on Liam’s attention.

“Yeah, got a few,” he says, swallowing down and ignoring the nervous shake threatening to spill over past his skin. 

“Jersey number?” Liam asks, pointing with his camera lens to the number inked under his left collarbone.  
“Yeah,” Louis answers, smile cracking across his face, toeing off his shoes.  
“Looks sick,” Liam says, nodding his camera back towards Zayn. “You should check out Zayn’s sometime. Next level stuff.”  
“Yeah, definitely,” Louis agrees, edging his jeans down his thighs and stepping out of them, feeling a smear of self consciousness spread out along the base of his neck, carnation pink and prickling. 

“Can we get you over here?” Liam asks, voice back to business. Louis crosses the distance between them, and lets himself be prodded into a straight-backed stance. “Perfect, arms at your sides...that’s it.” Liam adjusts the angle of the camera, shuffling the tripod back a few inches. “And Zayn? Would you mind sitting back just a tad?” Zayn makes a show of edging his stool back, propping his sketchbook on his knees and sighing. Liam smirks.

“So, just like this is okay?” Louis asks, gaze flicking back and forth between the two.  
“Just there’s perfect, thanks,” Zayn says, offering a smile and flipping his notebook open. 

“Try to focus your eyes on one spot,” Liam suggests, lifting up the camera and gesturing around the room. “And find a stance that feel natural. It’ll make it easier to hold your posture the same way for a while.” Louis glances over to where Zayn is smoothing a hand over his sketchbook page, then away to the side, finding the back wall of the studio.

On the wall is a thin white sheet stretched over a canvas, mounted with pale shades of turquoise sea glass, lines and lines of gradient scales. Louis finds a piece - smooth-edged and oddly shaped, parts his legs a little further, and exhales.

 

Louis stands. Time passes, measured only by the number of times Zayn’s eyes lift off the paper, and scratch across his body, leaving invisible marks over his skin, and by the times Liam paces between them like a lens-eyed cyclops, footsteps seemingly weightless, drowned out by the sound of charcoal smudged by purposeful fingers. 

 

The sound of slow traffic, down and out the opened windows provides a hushed and distant soundtrack. Louis becomes hyperaware of his own breathing, tight and unsteady as he stands on display, under inspection. Shallow, caught high up in his chest, and the stiff clench of his jaw. The floor beneath his bare feet, almost numbingly cold at first, now feels putty-like in its moist warmth. The tiles look antiseptically clean, grey speckled white tiles, reminiscent of bathrooms and hospitals. 

 

The shape of sea glass, soft hues of blue and green, gentled by the rage of the ocean and wound so tightly together, swim in Louis’ stare. Out of focus and unreachable from where he stands, feet sinking through the tiled floor, bones rigid and joints unoiled. Outside, and just as unreachable, the sun is spitting patches of gold into the room, lighting up rounded squares of white wall and snagging on eyelashes. 

 

The bareness of his shoulders feels weighted down by the unseen gaze from off beside the easel, and the unrelenting stare of the camera fixated between his body and Zayn’s fingers, scratching steady just out of his eye line. 

 

Despite the yellowing warmth of the morning reaching in to lick at him through the window, a shiver runs through him, cropping up in goosebumps along his skin, writing his exposure and unease across his flesh. He tries to even out his breathing, holding it captive and counting, hoping that the unsteadiness of his chest, and the pressure in his jaw won’t be transferred to the paper, or be picked up by the camera circling in Liam’s hold, vulturelike. 

A hand-sized patch of sunlight has skated lazily across the sea glass display - the piece Louis’ been staring at is now lit up, a bright, almost fluorescent colour, burning a twin shape of deep orange into his eyelids with each blink. 

 

Liam’s voice is shocking in its gentle baritone, and Louis’ ankles feel gelatinous as he tips his head towards the sound, balance barely shifted but almost disastrous. 

“You want something from the other angle now?” 

Zayn, now sitting in the shadow of the easel, purses his lips around a pencil, eyes on the page covering his lap.

“Yeah, spin him ‘round the other way,” he replies, vowels curving around the intruding tool. “Facing the door.” 

 

Liam comes towards Louis, camera still in hand, and a warm hand in the centre of his spine turns him to the side.

“Alright? Sun’s not in your eyes?” Liam asks, squaring out Louis’ shoulders while looking back at Zayn for confirmation.

“No, I’m good,” Louis replies, glancing back over to where Zayn’s head is still bent over his sketchbook. Something beeps from the corner of the black wall - the graveyard of tripods and microphone stands - and Liam dashes off towards it.

“Need to replace a battery pack,” he explains, pulling out sections of the box-like camera and clicking something into place, making Louis wonder just how much time has passed.

 

“Louis, lean back a bit on your heels,” Zayn says, ignoring Liam. Louis does, looking down at the way the light from the window pours out across his body with the slight movement, creating shadows and flushing his skin, lighting up the faint hairs along his chest and stomach. 

“Is this okay?” He asks, risking a look back towards the easel.

“That’s fine,” Zayn says, curt and dismissive, and Louis deflates slightly. 

“Don’t mind him,” Liam has snuck up behind Louis again, and he starts, an almost violent flinch as his feet try  
‘ to stay rooted in place, Liam’s laugh a warm puff of air against his shoulder. 

“He gets into his art and forgets his manners, don’t take it personally.” Louis tucks the edges of his lips up in response, dipping his head in the smallest of nods, struggling to stay still while acknowledging Liam’s words. Liam gives him a pat on the arm, walking back over the floor to stand just behind Zayn, aiming his camera down at his sketchbook. 

 

“I’m going to get a few more minutes of footage before I take off,” he says, tone pitched ambiguously, and Louis shifts his eyes to the side.

“You’re leaving?” He questions, keeping his back in place rigidly.

“Yeah, something that’s not related to projects for once,” Liam replies, bringing the body of his camera down so that it’s almost resting on shoulders, filming from Zayn’s perspective. “Off to meet someone for coffee - without springing some kind of proposition on them.” Peripherally Louis can see the edge of Liam, standing over Zayn, talking animatedly but camera held steady. “We’ll have to go out sometime while we’re all working together,” Liam continues, voice bright, “do something fun. Seems like all I do is work these days - you must know the feeling.” 

Turning his head imperceptibly to the side, Louis catches Liam’s gaze, about to reply, agree, when Zayn snappily says, “Could you turn your head back, please?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Louis mutters, catching Zayn’s scowl as he turns to face the door again. His view this time is decidedly less interesting, only a steel-framed door, painted white to match the interior. 

“Honestly Zayn,” Liam chuckles, and from out of view Louis hears the no-nonsense snap of a lens cap. “I’d better get going.” Zayn huffs something under his breath, almost passable as merely a rough exhale. “You’ve got about twenty minutes left of your session, Louis. Don’t let Zayn keep you longer. He’ll sit there in his own little world all day if he could.” There’s a sound of shuffling as Liam gathers his things, finally crossing the room, saying his goodbyes with a smile drenched in etiquette. 

Then halting, disgustingly empty silence. 

Minutes whine by, and Louis feels the sunlight sweating a trail down his spine, and the pressure on the balls of his feet, pressed flatly to the tiled floor begins to stretch out, and climb up into his ankles. 

The tension in the air, at first his own discomfort, has shifted into a palpable thickness, a cracked hole in the calm demeanor of the white-washed room.

 

Finally, Zayn stirs, catlike, the stiff sound of his sketchbook spine closing, and Louis risks a glance, the tendons in his neck creaking like fussy hinges. Zayn is bunching his brushes and charcoal pencils together, enclosing them with an elastic band he snaps from around his wrist.

“That’s enough for today.” Louis turns to watch as he wrestles his sketchbook into the paint-spattered bag at his feet, tossing his brushes in as well before hefting it up onto the table. 

“Got what you needed?” Louis asks, tentative as he moves out of his stiff-postured stance, and feeling relief seep through his vertebrae like a voiceless sigh. 

“All set for the first piece,” Zayn says, now digging through his bag. “Sorry if I was a bit snappy before. I get way too intense sometimes...caught up in the zone, you know how it is,” his smile is friendly again, apologetic. 

“Yeah, for sure,” Louis replies, relieved and eager to forgive. “I get pretty lost in the moment playing football too.” Zayn laughs, darkly low and intoxicating. 

“Athletes and artists,” he trails off, shaking his head. “It’s a little too easy to get absorbed in passion.” As he talks, his hands find what he’s looking for inside his bag, and pull out a rectangular tin, some vibrantly coloured comic book print faded out along the outside. 

 

A cool breeze comes through the opened window, startling the bare skin of Louis’ back, and shudders, instantly aware of his state of undress, incredulous that he could have forgotten, having spent the entire duration feeling so exposed. 

Trying to move himself at a pace somewhere below a scramble, he collects his clothes, pulling them back on in a way he hopes appears blasé. 

“You’re a good model, by the way,” Zayn mentions in an offhand sort of way as Louis’ pulling the heel of his shoe up over his foot. He must look surprised, because Zayn laughs, that sudden, barking sound. 

“A lot of people try so hard to pose, or look a certain way, hold their faces all strangely,” he elaborates, opening the tin in his hands, and releasing a tangy, pungent smell. “You looked natural. Nice little body, too.” Zayn’s voice is hieroglyphic; complementary and blithe alongside a suggestive glint burrowed in eyes that flick back carelessly to roam over Louis’ now clothed chest and torso. 

 

Louis’ reply is stuck in his throat, brain trying to string together a response but instead ensnaring itself in the threads. Zayn’s fingers, black-smeared and deft, are now cradling a glass pipe. It catches the light from the windows and shines brightly, deep purple spiraling into every shade of red. 

 

“You don’t mind, right?” Zayn’s voice is cutting through the distraction holding his gaze, like a bird collecting coloured cellophane, and he blinks. “Liam said you were cool.” Louis feels his chest inflate somewhat, shaking his head with an offered smile. Zayn directs a grin at him, fingers skillfully filling the bowl, the scent stronger now, thick and sweet, and there’s something underneath that reminds Louis of roadkill. 

 

Zayn pulls a lighter from his pocket and flicks it, pipe instantly drawn to his mouth, burning cherry red and shoulders lifting as if to take flight with his inhale.

 

“You want?” The words flow like prose from his mouth, coated in grey silk. Louis stares. 

“I...uh,” he swallows, watching the curve of Zayn’s mouth around the pipe. 

 

“I can’t,” he finally manages. “Drug tests and stuff...for the team? Sorry.” Zayn shrugs, exhaling.

“That’s too bad. Guess they’ve got you on lockdown these days.” Louis finds himself nodding along, his eyes having drawn themselves to Zayn’s mouth, the swell of his lower lip, and now reluctant to ever leave. 

“Pretty much. No drinking unless we’ve got some time off, too.” Zayn hums out his sympathy through another mouthful of smoke. Louis watches it spill out and vanish.

“Did you want to see?” Louis blinks his eyes away from Zayn’s lips as he speaks. 

“Your drawing,” he clarifies, smile stretching as Louis raises his eyebrows in understanding.

“Yeah, yeah sure,” he says, hesitant as he crosses the room, legs feeling oddly heavy after their time spent immobile. Zayn pulls his sketchbook back out of his bag, and up close Louis marvels at its thickness. 

Zayn flips to a page nearing the end, and Louis is met with a faceless replica of himself. Bold shadows write across the body, circled with fingerprints of crude smudges. Every muscle he possess is prominent and magnified, as if Zayn stripped him of his skin with his eyes, and delicately placed the layers he found underneath. Looking at the page, looking at the way Zayn has seen him, and pressed him into paper, Louis suddenly feels just as vulnerable as before, somehow twice as naked. 

 

“This is amazing,” his mouth is talking for him, neck turning in time to see a slow smile creeping across Zayn’s lips, as he ducks his head shyly. In profile, his eyelashes rest dark and impossibly long across his skin. It looks well rehearsed. 

“Thanks,” he says, voice turning to a murmur, looking at the page critically. “You can look through the rest of it if you like, it’s mostly just practice and rough drafts...” His tone is too modest to deny, and Louis finds himself flipping through to the front, noting in awe that every page is filled, some back to back.

“This is incredible. I can’t believe someone could have filled this many pages,” he says, wonder spilling in to his voice as he stares at the first drawing - bird skulls. 

“I could say the same thing about the number of laps you’ve run,” Zayn’s eyes are bright and cordial, smile crooked as he turns his head towards Louis. Louis snorts at this.  
“Running around in a circle hardly takes much talent,” he says, eyes drinking in the delicately morbid shapes written out before him, each outlined twice in thin blue and shocking magenta ink.  
The next page is whales, each shape identical, but the shading growing more and more elaborate until the first looks cartoonish, the last like a photograph. 

 

Zayn refills his pipe in the corner of Louis’ eye, posture careless and fingers surgical in their precision. 

 

“These really are incredible. Do you do this professionally?” Louis asks, glancing up from a page of what looks like statues drawn in quick-lined pencil. Beside him, Zayn is drawing in a breath, deep and hollow-cheeked. He nods, exhaling a breathless thank you, and Louis swallows. 

“I’ve had some stuff in a gallery before, and designed tattoos for a couple people, but this is the first real ‘project’ I’ve been a part of,” Zayn answers, tipping ashes back inside his tin case, knocking his pipe delicately against the side.

“What sort of designs?” Louis asks, angling his hips to the side as Zayn comes to stand beside him.

“I’ve got another book that’s just those,” he answers, laughing. “Birds, couple different styles of fish, a few portraits. Most abstract stuff. Like just wacky ideas. Here - “ Zayn cuts off, and as Louis watches, peels his shirt off. 

“I designed mine too,” Zayn continues, ignoring Louis’ dropping jaw. “A lot of the sleeve was practice, then the bigger pieces were more thought out.” 

Zayn’s skin, creamy and rich, is a myriad of tattoos, pictures winding across his body like untouchable ideas. Both his arms are slathered in ink, one all in black, the other dotted with colour that screams out in defiance.  
“You _designed_ these.” It’s not a voiced as a question, but Louis still looks up at Zayn for confirmation, who laughs. 

“Jesus...” Louis breathes, taking in the patterns. “This one’s so cool...” his fingers linger just above the coat of a tiger curled around his upper arm. “Always wanted something big, but I could never settle on something...never really had the inspiration for anything either.”  
“How many d’you have?” Zayn asks, lifting his arms obligingly as Louis inspects the detailing. 

“Just two,” he admits, smiling sheepishly as Zayn grins at him, one eyebrow raising. “I was always a bit nervous about the needles...then I decided if I was getting any they’d have to have a lot of meaning behind them.” Zayn nods along. “I’m definitely not brave enough for something like that,” he added, tracing the outline of a lipstick print in the centre of Zayn’s chest. “Don’t think I could pull it off.” 

“Where’s your other one?” Zayn asks, eyes heavy lidded as he scans him slowly. “Wasn’t anywhere I could see...” he trails off into a smirk, meeting Louis’ eye again. 

“Ankle,” Louis replies, a blush threatening to form at the insinuation. “Just...” he lifted his leg up, rolling the hem of his pants up to reveal a small black outline of a triangle. “Not that exciting.”

“I like it,” Zayn said, a light shrug following his words. “Simple’s a lot more powerful sometimes.” 

The transition into something more serious looms threateningly, and Louis’ stomach flips slightly under the heat of Zayn’s surveillance, his eyes gold-flecked and lit up in the starkness of the open room. 

The windows suddenly carry the same weight Liam’s camera held as he paced the room, not quite judging, but merciless and watchful. Louis is all too aware of how close their bodies have become as Zayn turns back to face the table, closing the tin case, and fitting his sketchbook back inside his bag. Its seams are pulling tightly, and Zayn’s still shirtless, his ribcage a narrow and retracting thing that Louis can’t look away from. 

“What time is it?” Louis asks, willing his eyes to move, pulling up as Zayn turns back to face him, and catching a streak of feathered wings between collarbones as Zayn digs a beat up looking phone from his pocket.

“Twelve fifteen,” Zayn replies, and a something sparks up Louis’ back, jolting him. 

“Shit, I’m going to be late...” he mutters, tapping his phone and keys inside the pocket of his jeans and making towards the door. “This was fun but I’ve really got to go.” Zayn’s eyes, hazy, yet dark and entertained watch him leave.  
“Sure, mate. See you next time.” The lazy voice escorts him from the room as he breaks into a jog, taking the stairs two at a time until he’s out of the building, anxious-footed and hailing a cab from the first campus street he finds. 

 

He’s the last one to arrive at the training centre. The changing room is empty, and he dresses madly, sprinting out to the field to meet him teammates, catching a few warning glares before someone slaps him amiably on the back. He wonders if the smell of pot has snuck inside too, ink-like in its permanence. 

 

And later, in the showers, he scrubs his skin until it feels raw and gasping; an attempt to scrape Zayn’s stare from his skin, desperate and clawing.

 

It’s not until he’s alone, beneath the sheets in his bed that he finds it hasn’t worked.


	4. Chapter 4

His second visit to the art campus is at an earlier hour than the first, a number of days later. The morning is still holding on to paleness, the sun still stretching before taking its place at the highest peak.

The walk over, now familiar, doesn’t feel quite so laced with unease, and he feels free to enjoy the route. The trees settle in amid the fussy telephone wires, and their leaves hang low and wide in heavy shades of green. Quietly, in whispered rumours, they threaten to change and lighten, give way to something else that’s hiding underneath. 

 

Inside the studio the air seems subdued, the tension from the first session leashed and muzzled.

 

This time Liam’s hands are both free to grasp one of Louis’ in a tight squeeze, camera hanging on a strap around his neck, level with his chest. 

“Nice to see you again,” he says. “How have practices been going?” Louis returns the squeeze, his grip feeling feeble in comparison with Liam’s bone-crushing friendliness. 

“Really well. It’s great to be back at it. Team’s definitely shaping up,” he replies, stretching out his fingers once Liam releases them. 

 

Zayn’s back on his stool by the easel, silently watching their exchange, and Louis wonders briefly whether he’s even moved since he last saw him, or if he stays perched there, like some exotic bird. 

That sharp look is back in his gaze, the dark side of playful, and Louis isn’t sure why he finds it so enticing. Standing in the doorframe, he feels his hip jut out to the side, hardly provocative beneath the fabric of his clothes, but Zayn follows the motion like a sighthound.

“So how do you want me today?” Something filthy and calculating swims behind Zayn’s face at the words. 

“Over by the window...” Louis crosses the room, noting that the tiny potted plants have disappeared from the sill. 

“We’re going to have you laying down this time,” Liam says, gesturing to the now-empty expanse. “One knee bent, propping yourself up. That right, Zayn?” The artist nods, fingers running slowly up and down the worn spine of his sketchbook, heavy on his lap.  
“Alright,” Louis says, shrugging his arms out of the sleeves of his sweater. 

“And let us know if you need a break today,” Liam adds, removing the lens cap and switching settings as Louis undresses. “Might be a bit of a strain after a while.” 

“Thought Zayn just forced people to pose through the pain,” Louis says, teasing and testing, watching the corners of Zayn’s lip twitch, eyes flashing up to meet his, daring. 

“I’m not letting him get away with that today,” Liam says, tone as serious as the cheerfulness in his face would allow. A disbelieving cackle from Zayn. 

The smooth surface of the windowsill is a shock against Louis’ bare skin, immediately pulling tight and gasping. There’s just enough space for his body to lie comfortably, elbows coming to each edge as he props up his upper half. From across the room he looks up to see Zayn devouring him with his eyes, an auburn pastel stick brandished in his fingers. It points accusingly at Louis.

 

Their contact is broken by Liam coming towards the window, sliding a pleasingly warm hand beneath Louis’ left knee, lifting it until his foot is flat against the sill. His fingers linger briefly, warming the skin there as he turns his head back to consult Zayn.

“Here?” Liam angles his body to the side, giving Zayn access again. His eyes raise hairs as if in worship, and Louis resists the urge to squirm under the assault. Laid bare, and under Zayn’s stare, and Liam’s hand, he wonders in a flare of distress if the combination is going to create something more than embarrassment. 

“Yeah, just smooth him out a bit.” It registers the second before Liam moves his hand what he’s referring to, and he kicks out his right foot in a jerky reflexive movement. 

“Easy,” Liam says, gentle and warmblooded, with something that looks like it could be sport flickering in his eyes. His fingers move just as soothingly to the hem of Louis’ pants, evening out the line and sliding a faint pressure along the waistband, erasing the wrinkles in the fabric and making something swell in Louis’ chest and throat. 

“All set, Zayn?” There must be a nod, but Louis is trapped in the dark amber of Liam’s eyes, only blinking when the camera slides up over his face like a mask, and he edges backwards, shark-like in silence.

Louis feels his lungs compress as he reclines back on his forearms, weight settling like debris.

 

The sun is coming in again, and lighting up his outline. The hairs along his arms stand up to meet the warmth, stretching up past the cool air breathing softly through the opened window. For a moment he feels golden, basking there in the light, but finally a cloud crosses the sun, and the summer in his skin seems to fade, wilt, and the cool air seems to get colder in a soft reminder that autumn will conquer. 

 

For the first time, it dawns on him that the cold pane almost touching his left arm is, in fact, a _window,_ and worry begins to flirt with his stomach, painting pictures of people outside glancing up to see him spread out against the glass.

 

There’s no sign or sound of an audience, but the thought won’t fade. 

 

It’s not until the crease of his shoulders begin to nag, that the pressure, the paranoia of being seen begins to hush and dwindle. 

 

The nag grows, feeding on stillness, and threatening to spill out and over, into the rest of his body, and consume.

A body already being consumed by two other creatures, one still and curve-backed, fingers sliding stealthily as hungry eyes eat and map out the frame locked in their sights, and one lens-faced and circling, starved for images, and feeding on Louis’ sun-drenched carcass. 

The sun tracks a slow, drawling trail along Louis’ skin from outside of the window. Inside, his body aches, a slow and blooming pain that pulses softly to the beat of his heart. A crimson kind of melody. 

 

“Can you hold that pose for a while longer?” Words make the room taste strangled and strange after so much silence. Louis twists a shoulder slightly, feeling the tightness that’s been collecting there, and imagines the pull worsening, singing at him, some off-key tune, making him shake, helpless to hide it.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replies lightly, and Liam makes a pleased noise.

“Such an agreeable model we’ve got here,” he says, tone teasing, and Louis preens under the praise, feeling the sharp ache lift and loosen into something warmer, and his mind settles, lighter.

 

The studio walls look a pale shade of shadowed blue when he’s finally given the okay to move again. 

 

Sitting up makes a bruising pain flower out from his abdomen, cramping and sore. His feet are all pins and needles as they meet the floor, and one side of Zayn’s hand is stained rust-coloured, dusting over the outline of a black swallow. 

 

Liam’s talking to him again, and his head feels slow and sweet as he tries to keep up. Something about his plans for the week, what his day looks like, all fat and ripe in midmorning. His mind runs like syrup as he finds a response, his blinks feeling doe-like now that the walls aren’t so blinding. 

 

“Practice at one, then tomorrow’s my day off. You?” The words come after a delay, arms stiff as they do their best to pull his clothes back on. It doesn’t feel quite so much like a bashful action the second time.

“Shooting another session. Then as much editing as I can keep my eyes open for,” Liam replies smoothly, then jerks a thumb over his shoulder towards Zayn. “This one will just keep going so long as I keep bringing him subjects. Actually, I’d better grab her from downstairs now. We ran a little overtime with you.” Liam moves towards the door as he talks, pace and words fast and almost breathless. 

 

Zayn’s eyes weigh heavily on the back of Louis’ neck in Liam’s abrupt absence, so he turns, encouraged by the artist’s smile, and closes the distance. Zayn’s standing, sketchbook open and balanced on the stool invitingly. 

 

The shape of himself spread across the off-white and grainy page is a shock all over again. The lines and curves and shadowing are all from an angle he’s never seen himself from, but he innately knows is right. 

It’s another faceless piece, and Louis notes it aloud. Zayn hums, tapping a red-tinted pencil against his thigh.

“I want to put the expression in differently than the rest of the body. Contrasting mediums - different style, basically - it’s going to represent a separation of mind and body.” Louis’ watches wide-eyed, swallowing Zayn’s words. “The whole focus of the study is on bodies, different patterns of muscle, so having the faces and heads look separate is to really drive home that people are more than what their bodies are.” Louis must look lost, because Zayn laughs. 

“I’ll have Liam take a few pictures that I can use as reference. I don’t really like drawing expression from life models. It’s easier to hold bodies in place than faces.”  
“That’s what you were saying last time...” Louis says, head bobbing. “People looking fake or something.”

“Yeah,” Zayn agrees. 

 

“And you’re doing another now?” Zayn nods, flipping to an unmarked page of his sketchbook at the mention. Over on the table, he begins arranging his supplies, grouping like-coloured pencil crayons together beside short and brittling pastel sticks, all dark and earthy.

“You can stay and watch if you like,” Zayn offers casually, eyes flicking lazily over his collection of tools.  
“Really? Yeah, sure,” Louis found himself saying, thinking to check the time a beat later. “I’ve got a bit of time before I have to go.” He hears his attempt to sound indifferent fall flat, a clatter against the tiles, echoing against the walls.

Zayn’s eyes are all knowing, and they sneer at him.

“This is the next model,” he says, turning and flipping the pages of his sketchbook cooly.

 

A body, all long and lithe, ribcage delicate and exposed in a brutal backward arch that leaps out from the page. Louis gapes openly at the image; a butterfly pinned to cork board, but still so ready to take flight, weightless and frail in thinness. 

Again, faceless, posed with an almost vulgar anonymity, but Louis can already imagine her gait, her poise, the hold of her wrists, all captured in the black smoke and coffee stains across the canvas.

 

There’s no shock when the shape from the page appears at the door, blonde and stretched out and impossibly thin next to Liam, who’s three times as wide at the shoulders. Louis stares, at first in disbelief that this rail thin girl is an athlete, but then blinking in understanding, picking out the hard, lean bunch of her calves, and the strict hold of her arms and spine, mannequin and firm. 

 

“You two getting along?” There’s a slight twist to Liam’s words that Louis hasn’t heard before, something twiggish and almost tense. Beside him, the girl’s lips purse, stained berry-red. Through a daze that smells like smoke and charcoal, Louis clues in that the question is for him.

 

“Zayn’s just been telling me why he’s putting all the faces in separately,” he manages, brain still feeling too slow, or a size too big for its casing.

“Lucky I left that one running,” Liam counters, nodding to the camera mounted on a tripod behind the easel. “That’ll make a nice narration to overlay later.” 

Something combative sparks between Liam and Zayn’s eyes, and Louis tries his best to follow, while hoping his fawning doesn’t show as quite so evident on film. 

“I have another class at two,” a voice that’s just as blonde to match slides icily from the lips of the girl. Her feet are sock clad, pale grey leggings vanishing up into a fitted white leotard, and bare arms. Barely half of Liam’s weight, but she addresses him with a look and Louis’ surprised frost doesn’t form over his skin.

“Of course,” Liam’s voice is business and formality again, smile all white and warm, but it isn’t enough to melt the pale blue eyes drilling through his skull. “Zayn? Are you ready? Third position then, please.” 

The girl crosses her legs together incrementally, one arm lifted skywards, hand limp, fingers in gentle points. The other arm comes out to her side, a sweeping motion, freezing midair. And her face is held calmly, wax statue realness, lids coming down but not quite closing, serene and practiced. 

 

Louis watches, this time a bystander, as Liam raises his camera, transforming into a legged dolly once again. 

 

And at his side, Zayn has transformed too. 

Atop the stool, posture a contoured slouch, sat some dark magician, hypnotist. Spells and witchcraft pouring out from his fingertips, pressed thinly to the canvas, pulling shapes and images from the air and pushing a twisted likeness to the blank white sheet. 

 

It’s time that finally itches Louis to move again, ticking against his skull in a high pitched chide. His eyes feel tired and much too big from the constant ricochet between the daintily stretched body of the ballerina, profile lit up and face in shadows, and the greased and machinelike motion of Zayn’s hands. The things he pulls from the table, so carefully chosen without raising his eyes, flow like extensions of his fingers as they press and murmur against the paper. 

 

Louis feels like he’s been pressed inside a basket, and coaxed out by mesmerizing music played so sweetly, but it’s Zayn’s eyes that look reptilian as Louis moves, and they raise to watch him, the bend of his wrists coiling.  
Louis motions towards the door in wordless explanation, and Zayn’s eyes snap back to his page, nodding once, curt in finality. 

 

“Heading out?” Liam’s voice is soft and winding, but Louis still startles at the sound, glancing to where the girl is standing, arms unwavering, like a wind-up doll. He nods breathlessly. Her face is still frozen and tranquil, but he imagines a shadow of annoyance dance through her expression.

 

“I’ve got enough for the day,” Liam says, lowering the camera back to his chest, and raising a hand to beckon Louis towards the door. “Here, there was something I meant to show you yesterday...” 

Louis follows him out of the studio. The white walls of the stairwell are dyed an ever deeper blue, and they descend in waves. 

 

“Plans for your day off?” Liam asks, dipping a shoulder back to smile at Louis.  
“Sleeping in,” Louis admits, and Liam laughs in understanding. 

“Next time you have time off we should go out - “ Louis’ eyes narrow slightly, deciphering, “ - get a group together and have some drinks, something to unwind.” Louis nods, ignoring the frown that tics at the edge of his mouth. 

“Yeah, that’d be great. What was it you wanted to show me?” He adds, having momentarily forgotten.  
“Ah! Yes, Zayn mentioned that you were nearly late in getting back the other day... wish I had stuck around longer, because there’s a shorter way to get off campus. The stage a few floors down - some of the advanced dancers use it as a private practice area - and it has a side exit through the back room. You can cut through, save about ten minutes.”  
“Shit, could have used that yesterday,” Louis laughs, following Liam as he crosses through a hallway, and they come to a large double framed door on the opposite end. 

 

Inside the room are empty gaps where Louis assumes chairs should be arranged in pews, facing the half moon stage that fills the eerily open space. A piano stands docile in the corner.

The auditorium lights are on, pale orange and mounted high up on the ceiling. A solitary figure moves in the glow, broader than the girl upstairs, masculine, but matching in grace. 

 

Under the lights the boy looks featherlight and fragile. Beauty and lines emerge with each stroke of his hands through the air, always poised perfectly, delicately, fingers trailing after him, above him. He weaves across the stage like an afterthought, light and pale.

 

His limbs are poetry.

Louis feels bulky, cumbersome. 

 

Liam calls out, announcing their presence, and immediately, Louis feels like an intruder. The guilt stirring in his guts intensifies as the boy sees them, and stops his movements, not a falter, but an interrupted stream of elegance.

 

As the boy moves towards them, Louis begins to feel very small. Looking at him now, looking up at him now, he resists an urge to rub at his eyes, to attempt to cast away the spell that’s been laid over him. _Fragile? Featherlight?_ How had those thoughts forced their way into his head?  
Whatever delicate creature that had spun and twisted its way across the auditorium stage had vanished. Morphed, transformed into a towering monster with grey eyes and thick coils of muscle, sweat staining through white fabric and leaving a slick sheen across flushed and unmarked skin.

Louis feels like he’s standing on uneven ground, and looking at a shadow leaking out from beneath his feet, watching it twist and turn itself into something dark and elongated, all limbs and torso and not at all familiar. 

The dancer comes closer, chest rising and falling as he catches his breath, and Louis can sympathize, feeling heavy lunged and breathless.

 

“Zayn’s almost ready for you upstairs,” Liam is saying, “you can head up when you’re ready.” To Louis, “I’ll see you next time, we’ll film your interview before the usual stuff. Take care!” A pat on the arm, warm even though the layer of his shirt, and he’s been dismissed. 

 

* * *

 

He’s on time to practice. He pushes himself, forcing past his teammates, driving forwards. Later, he stains his skin red in the shower, and listens to the way his nerves sing.  
He thinks of blisters. It helps.

 

* * *

 

His day off is spent in bed. His body aches, enflamed and sighing its complaint of all the strain it’s been subjected to, petulant. Louis ignores it, but gives in to the other ache that’s burning dull and low in the pit of his stomach. 

His eyes close, mind wandering and stirring up a figure. Something warm and devilish, with tight gripping hands, long-boned and warm-mouthed.

He doesn’t give it a face.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s raining when Louis gets up, feeling cliché as his mood is instantly dampened. Running a bit behind, as usual, but without the chipper morning sunlight to urge him along, he dawdles, feet dragging. He wishes it didn’t feel like the raindrops smearing the windows were mocking him. 

 

Practice runs brutal. Starting with a fist-lined speech about how they need to be pushing themselves, doing better, _striving,_ before they ended up making the team look terrible, and not relenting until Louis’ body feels damp and doughy. 

 

The red of his jersey feels too bold in the way it ripples and falls as he breathes raggedly, struggling to keep up. The flash and colour feels like some wrong identity thrust over him, like he’s faking, poorly, and everyone can see he doesn’t add up. 

 

And maybe it’s the gloom outside, or the way he fell to dead back of the team laps but he can’t seem to make the insecurity clinging to his skin wash off, no matter how high he sets the shower dial.

He leaves the complex feeling thin chested, muscles ribbony.

 

* * *

 

Outside, it’s still raining, and it’s just too easy to put the blame of the day on the weather.   
Or the blame of the week, as it turns into. 

 

* * *

 

It’s raining again, a soppy drizzle, when he sets off for the studio. The sidewalks are streaked and worm-smelling, and he’s barely half a block from his door when he begins debating calling to cancel.   
His feet carry him there anyway, despite the low-pressure begging picking up in his temples, and overall weight of his mind. 

His head is a spiral of practice drills, and statistic sheets, the sideways eyes of teammates when he fumbles his footing.

 

Inside the studio, even Liam’s eyes seem to be judging, as he greets him shortly, disappearing to fetch him a towel. 

 

The dancer from the downstairs stage is there too, dressing slowly as Zayn is lining detail onto a canvas with a thin brush. He’s not dancing, but Louis still feels like his eyes are invading, so he drops them to the floor, catching a stretch of skin, smoothly pale, like marble. 

A statue in granite, as white as the walls and just as tall. 

 

Liam’s questions don’t seem to be rehearsed at all, yet he words them easily, looking for angles in Louis that he can pry out with his camera. Basic things, what games are like from first person, how practices run, team activities. Routines that Louis knows, that he can play the footwork for in his sleep, yet he pauses, filling gaps of time with stutters and jerky, nervous hand movements.

He feels his tongue slip and stumble over wording, forgetting letters here and there and painting the dullest picture of what he does. He can see himself through the lens of the camera, seeing the way he’s demoting himself to nothing more than a pair of cleats, brainless, thoughtless. It’s an extension of dissatisfaction at himself, shoulders dipping down and together, and the rain outside is now blameless.

 

It’s a relief when the questions let up, and Zayn makes a show of turning to a new page, motioning for Louis to come forward. A terrible screeching noise fills the room as Liam drags a large wooden chest across to the centre.  
“We’re going to have you lay across this for today,” he says, tapping the top of it with a flat hand. It doesn’t sound hollow. “Shoulders to the very back, it’s all leg this time I believe.” An affirming nod from Zayn.

 

“Spread out a bit...” Zayn directs, once Louis’ rain-kissed clothes are off, and he’s lying down across the length of the chest. There’s a hesitation before he does, pulling his knees out to the sides. His feet hang off the edge, and his heart picks up a nervous flutter at the exposure. Skin still damp where the rain had stuck his shirt to him, a circle of residual wetness at his lower back, now pressed against the grainy scrape of the wooden surface.

 

His position feel lewd. It’s easier to drop his head back than witness the unaffected passing of Zayn’s eyes over his body, and in his line of vision the tall, uncovered windows are closed, spattered by raindrops. 

 

Liam stays leaning by the windowsill for a while, camera held steadily at neck level. Louis tries to picture the angle to distract himself from his own body. He imagines the wide, eclipsing whiteness of the room, zeroing in on Zayn’s arthritic posture on his stool, eyes drifting upwards from his page, fingers hardly slowing. He wonders if the angle is showing Zayn from between his own legs, bare and craving to shake, pulled tight in a rag doll splay. 

The widespread angle of his thighs, and the single-minded focus of Liam’s camera makes him feel like a pinup, so many pages away from the centerfold. But there’s no glamour or gloss, only the slow fire spreading through his muscles as he holds the pose and berates himself under Zayn’s stare. 

 

Before he leaves, Liam approaches with his camera again, Zayn trailing after him. 

“Couple pictures and you’re free to go,” Liam says, and Louis nods, trying to strangle the grimace that threatens to take over. Zayn steps forward, propping Louis’ chin up, then to the side with the end of a paintbrush. A pathetic voice whines a question through Louis’ head, asking why Zayn won’t touch him. It feels like it’s already been answered.   
The camera flashes, popping behind eyelids, brilliant and startling, once, twice, trapping images inside the casing. Louis wonders if they look mundane to match the thick and slow way he spoke, or gawky like his corkscrewing spine across the page. 

 

As he makes for the door, Liam’s goodbye sounds halfhearted, his head tilting in towards Zayn as they discuss something in a closed off conversation. He isn’t asked to hang around today, and Louis pulls the door closed behind him. If it closes a little snarkily against its hinges, well. 

 

The wind down the blue-lit stairwell feels bitter and watery to match the swelling in his head. Inside, something snappish and stinging is rising slowly, like saltwater, and the taste is sharp and gritty against his tongue. 

 

He second guesses his steps at first, but then the hallway with the large, two-doored entrance at the end appears, and he winds his way down. 

It’s not empty as he’d hoped, ready to make a round-shouldered retreat, so he sticks to the wall like a shadow. A man sits at the piano bench, red hair that catches the orange glow of stage lights like a match head. His fingers are picking out a high tinkling melody that rivers out over the audience of ghosts in whimsy. 

 

On the stage, the girl from Zayn’s sketchbook is weaving, winding out a duet to the keys. Her hair and her hands are both pulled back, away from her face, up, and painfully tight. Light, fair, and impossibly balanced, she holds herself as the notes are held, delicate and fluttering. Birdlike.

 

The music pauses, and her posture slinks back to something recognizable, almost human. She crumples to the floor like fabric, one leg drawing in, holding tight to her body as the other stretches out, an impossibly arched foot. Her hands write tender secrets through the air above her thighs as she exhales. As Louis passes the stage, her eyes raise to find him through the lights. She smiles, a sympathetic twist, and he’s affronted by the kindness it implies. 

Their brief and wordless encounter upstairs had left him with a bile-like aftertaste he had assumed she had brought in. He second guesses under the lights, and wonders if it was his own bitterness, brought on by the insecurities burrowing beneath his skin. 

 

The back room holds another body like a figurine in a glass case. Music trickles in in soft peals, a pale soundtrack as muscles stretch and pull like spreading wings. 

 

The male dancer from earlier, in a similar state of undress, now just beige leggings straining over the mass of his thighs, white vest-top that leave his shoulders exposed. Half facing the mirror, but eyes slipped closed as he moves, some repeated motion, bending his leg and arm in unison, other hand hovering above the bar that runs across the expanse of the mirrored wall. The movement is dull routine, mindless ritual, and with more finesse than Louis can ever imagine possessing. 

 

Annoyance, and some shameful shyness digs inwardly at Louis as he drags himself inside. He lets the door knock haughtily closed behind him as he forgets he was trying to stay small, and sneak by. The sound echoes through the mirror-walled room, a snide comment that rattles in his head.

 

"Problem?" Of course the voice is low and honey-like, surely filled with stings and cavities. Louis lets the grey eyes catch him in their sights, then looks away.

"Not really…” he trails off into nothingness. He feels tense, and guilty somehow.  
“Have you just come from upstairs?” The words are soft spoken, yet drown out any sound of music from the outside room.  
“Yeah. How was your session?” He doesn’t know why he asks, doesn’t know why he’s not already out the door, skin dripping with rain instead of just this self conscious dampness that’s sticking to him.

“Fine. Some interview along with the posing,” a mild indifference accompanies the words, a blandness that Louis envies, continuing, voice pedestrian. “They have you do that?”   
Louis huffs in response, a hot and brittle sound, and the dancer sends a glance, seeking explanation without bothering to ask for it. Louis obliges anyway.  
“Yeah. I just…kind of feel like I could have answered some of those questions better. Caught me off guard, some of them, yeah? Probably sounded pretty dumb," he closes with a light laugh, and wonders if the way it catches in his throat is audible. 

The dancer shrugs - a short and ugly word to describe the movements of his bare shoulders; a rolling and controlled undulation. Louis finds his eyes trapped in the motion.

 

"Don't worry about it," that low voice is saying. The sound seems to come from something apart from the body held so flawlessly in form. "No one was expecting intelligent answers from you." Louis blinks at the monotone, taken aback by the bluntness of it.

"Excuse me?" Louis says, closely guarding the snappiness ebbing its way into his tone. The dancer flicks his eyes over to him.   
"They’re only interested in bodies." The smoothness in his voice seems to be dripping with gravel. "I doubt each interview will make it into the final project." Louis watches the graceful arc of his arm as the crease between his eyebrows deepens. 

"You didn't have to say it like that," he finally mutters bitterly, turning away from the dancer and his mirrored twin.   
"Like what?" The question is prying but the voice only sounds bored. Head twisting back uncomfortably, Louis watches as he doubles in half, raising an arm to point upwards.

"Like you think I'm stupid," Louis spits out, making a move for the door. Slowly, the dancer lowered his arm and stood up, straight and bold, spinning lightly on one foot to face the other boy.

"I don't know the first thing about you," the bored, glassy drawl is saying. "For all I know, you could be." Louis' jaw clenches.   
"Well, I'm not. Maybe you should think over your words before you open your mouth." The dancer's face seems to pull closed at this, and he squares his shoulders, moving away from the bar and mirror and striding towards Louis. His walk is a mimicry of his dancing - strong, assured, without a shadow of a doubt or hesitation - and Louis shrinks, feet fumbling as he backs towards the open door. 

The dancer beats him to it, flicking his body to the side and blocking his escape with an outstretched arm. Louis swallows audibly, pressing his back to the inside of the doorframe.

"You've got a pretty big mouth yourself. What puts you in the position to be telling other people how to use theirs?" The smooth, low tone is gone now. In its place is a slow growl, enunciating each word despite being spoken through almost-bared teeth. 

"I don't like being talked to like that," Louis says. His voice is quieter, an octave higher, but it barely wavers. The arm blocking the door drops slowly. Louis watches it warily before adding, "especially not by people who _‘don't know the first thing’_ about me.” 

There’s a silence, tense and tight, as the dancer folds his arms across his chest, shifting his weight to one foot and angling his body to the side in irritation.

 

Louis mutters something, some lackluster apology that clings to the excuse of a bad week. Beneath his clothes he can feel his body shaking with the weight of it all - the practices, the poses, and now the leaden feel of standing his ground against this monster. He’s rewarded with an impassive shrug from the dancer. He wishes the way he beelines for the exit feels less like a surrender. 

The dampness that clings to the air outside narrates his way home.


	6. Chapter 6

The days that lie between his next session feel like bruises. He shows to his practices, feeling beaten, tail between his legs. 

He pushes himself past the limits he knows are safe. The drive and need to improve, to prove himself to someone consume, and he accepts the muscles he pulls in the process as milestones. Something. 

It’s an effort to keep the limp out of his walk. He manages the pain, telling himself it’s keeping him focused. 

Detached words nag at him as he runs the track, settling in to a lope, refusing to fall behind the pack. 

 

* * *

 

The next time he finds himself at the art studio, the sky is a little less grey, but all Louis feels is that the low hanging clouds have just taken up residence in his skull.

 

The ballet dancer from the stage is there, all bright eyes and sour expression as Liam walks her out into the hallway. Another girl is standing by the door as they exit, hair pulled into a messy knot atop her head, several inches shorter than the dancer. They eye each other up and down before passing. Louis isn’t sure if it’s out of distaste or intrigue. 

Liam greets the waiting girl with a welcoming smile, herding her inside the room with a light nudge. He turns last minute, as if just registering that Louis was standing there too. 

“Louis! We need to take a few motion shots, this’ll just take a moment. Could you pop downstairs and let Harry know we’ll need him for a few minutes before he heads out today?” Louis nods by default, then frowns.

“Who’s Harry?” Liam’s smile seems to be dipped in exasperation.  
“The danseur you met the other day...he’ll be down in the auditorium.” Louis interprets the words as clipped, dismissive. 

 

Walking down the stairs he had just climbed, an itch in Louis’ mind worsens. A doubt clinging to his perception like a filmy rind of something awful, clouding his interactions. 

Down the empty white hall, he tries to pull his thoughts together, pressing down on the damper that’s been hounding him, trying to compress it into something he can work with. 

 

As he’s faced with the double doors, his thoughts are a whirlwind of football pitches and frosted glares, and a conscious effort to be nicer pulling his face into an aching smile. He monitors his walk as he enters the room, trying to twist it into an imitation of confidence.

 

He feels small the instant he spots the dancer, and sets his jaw, determined to makes his words match the tiny feeling - small and weightless.

He announces his presence with a light knock against the doorframe. The dancer turns, straight-backed and square-jawed, giving Louis a once over. His face tweaks a little darker, eclipsing the peaceful, well rehearsed hold of his features as he circles the stage on pointed feet.

 

“Hi...” shyness overpowers the attempted friendliness in his voice like cheap perfume. “Liam said they need you back upstairs before you leave.” The dancer - _Harry_ \- exhales testily, lowering his body off the edge of the stage and approaching him.

 

“I’m Louis, by the way,” he says as the dancer pauses at the doorway. He’s subjected to a moody stare. Up close, with the stark lighting on the hall pushing in, he can pick out a foggy green colour in his gaze. 

“Harry,” the dancer says. It’s a tight obligation, rather than an offering. 

“Nice to meet you,” Louis tries, inwardly wincing at the events of their last encounter. He’s rewarded with a hot puff of breath and a slimy mutter, _“I’m sure..”_

 

Harry’s legs out-stride him in the hall, and Louis adds a dash of bounce to his walk in order to keep up. It feels strained, like there’s elastic bandaging wrapped around the air.

“Do you have a show coming up?” The attempt to sound upbeat backfires, and Louis practically chirps, fake sounding and hollow. Harry side-eyes him, not letting up his quick pace down the hall.

“I just mean... you always seem to be working for something...” words trip stupidly over themselves in Louis’ head as he tries to strike up some sort of conversation. Harry’s interest seems locked away, perhaps blocked by Louis’ obvious lack of knowledge of ballet. 

“I’m a new feature, of course I’m always working.” A sharp sting is present in his voice when he finally does respond. Louis lets it resonate for a moment before trying again.  
“New feature in what?” This time he’s answered with a quick glance, withering, and he feels himself wilt.  
“Heard of the Royal Ballet?” There’s some snide undertone he doesn’t want to think about.

“Something that involves the Queen in a leotard?” He goes for humour, a cheap fallback, and it falls flat, like morning after champagne, stripped of its brilliance. 

“The Man U of high society dancing.” The words are dipped in sardonicism. Louis tries to ignore it, but it twists like something rusted, and his resolve crumbles slightly. 

“Must be big. When does the season start?” He tries not to let himself be talked down to, but from his place, bounding to keep up with the well-muscled stride beside him, it’s hard not to. 

“Spring.”  
“Same for me, too!” The chipper tone sounds cartoonish in his head. 

They’re at the stairs now, Harry just ahead, and Louis’ faced with his back as he goes up, feet light and soundless. Louis dashes to keep up.

The studio door is still shut, and Harry reaches for the handle, slipping inside without bothering to hold it wider for Louis too. 

Inside, Liam is crouched on the floor, camera angled upward as a girl twists her body in a meaty writhe. In the back, Zayn’s eyes don’t leave her body. Her hair is down from the knot it was contained in earlier, and now falls in a white-blonde sheet down past her shoulders. She doesn’t seem to be bothered by her lack of coverage - small biking shorts that stretch obscenely over her toned upper thighs, and a bandeau restricting the swell of her breasts in a tight wrap.

 

Liam looks like a plaster of cheer pasted over irritation as he spots the two at the door, camera lowering.  
“I’ll be with you in a moment. Would you mind waiting outside while we finish this session?” Louis is unsure what _‘we’_ Liam is referring to, as Zayn’s sketchbook lies untouched on the table, but follows the dancer back out of the room, shadowed by his height.

“Sorry...I didn’t know how long it’d take,” Louis says apologetically, glancing over at where Harry is standing, just outside the doors.

“It’s fine,” he replies tersely. 

 

“How do you know Liam and Zayn?” Louis quickly fills the approaching silence with small talk, unwilling to let the shining black crickets waiting patiently in the distance between them to make an appearance. His thoughts are six-legged too, running frantically.

“I don’t,” Harry says, brusque. “They came to the dance studio and asked some of us to pose for a project.”  
“That girl...the other ballet dancer, she’s on the same team as you?”  
“Troupe, not team,” Harry says. Louis can taste the hostility, tangy and fierce.  
“Troupe, sorry... but you dance together?” Harry makes an affirming noise that sounds more growl-like than anything. 

 

“Zayn showed me some of the pieces he’s working on of her - they look really good.” Louis pipes up again after a beat, fighting off the urge to drop it, or leave entirely.  
“I’ve seen.” Harry’s eyes wash over Louis, now tinted a blueish-green in the lighting from the stairwell windows, aquatic in their apathy. 

“You have?” Louis blinks away from the contact, trying to wrestle a smile that doesn’t looked forced onto his face. 

“You think you’re the only one he tries to charm after he spends an hour watching you without clothes on?” Something mild and festering bubbles in Louis’ brain. 

“He’s just being nice,” he says, suddenly feeling defensive. He can feel the attempt to be fresh and friendly sag in the middle. 

“I’m sure you see it that way.” The words are smooth, cutting into Louis like the stern of a boat, water parting on either side. 

 

“His art’s really good. Really good detailing.” Now he knows his words are coming out jutting and clammy. Inside, his bones feel too big for their casing. Outside grey, wispy clouds dot the sky. A simple breeze squeezes through the gap in the blue windows. 

 

“He showed me one page where he had just done up my tattoos, and it looked like he had transferred them right from my skin.” Harry sighs uncaringly, loosely folding his arms across his chest. 

“Well maybe if the whole edgy student project thing doesn’t work out he can be a tattooist.” The words fall like dead leaves, colourless to the floor. Encouraged by a full sentence, Louis shifts nervously on the balls of his feet, pushing.

“Do you have any?” Harry quirks an eyebrow and the corner of his lips turn down, pulling tightly. 

“No.”  
“Scared of needles?” Louis tries to slip a teasing banter into his tone, but it comes out sounding mocking and childish. Harry shoots him down with a sneering glare.  
“Of course not. I just don’t see the point in marring up my body with cheap ink.” Louis snorts.  
“For starters, they’re not cheap - good ones really dent your bank account - "  
"And you're clearly well versed in 'good ones'…" Harry's tone drips with a condescending melody. Louis pretends he doesn’t hear it.

"It's not about 'marring up' your body, anyway. It's really personal, matching an image to something that really impacted your life…or representing a person who had a big influence on you…" It’s easier to ease the words into flowing on a topic that means something. Harry glances back at him, arms crossed.

"Ah yes, the profound number seventy eight…and the deep, spiritual meaning of a triangle."  
Louis lets the nasty tone slide and he blinks in surprise.

“How’d you - ?” Harry’s eye roll cuts him off.  
“That artist quite likes showing off. Though I can’t see why either of you would be particularly proud of those bits in particular.” 

Louis snaps, teeth clicking together in his mouth.  
"You don't know the stories behind them - you don't know anything about my life!" An edge has crept into his voice, poisonous and biting. Too late, he dimly thinks of his determination to inject pleasantries into his exchanges. 

"You're gay and your football jersey has a big seventy eight on the back, doesn't take a genius," Harry spits back, voice equally as vile and toxic.  
"There's so much more to that than you think there is. Stop acting like you know everything, you pretentious shit!" Harry's face goes dark again, and he turns, leaning in menacingly.

"Enlighten me." The soft growl of his voice makes Louis shiver, but he doesn't back away, looking up at him. He chokes down the anger that’s been stirring inside him for days now, tries to spin it into something else.

“I’m sure you felt something when you were picked to be part of your team - troupe,” he corrects quickly, searching for something that isn’t menacing in Harry’s eyes. He finds it, something restrained and haunting in its pale colour.

“It’s not just a jersey number. It’s just what I used to represent finally achieving something I’d been after my whole life. Might not be _‘high society’_ enough for you, but it’s not _nothing.”_

There’s a silence in which Louis takes the time to stand up straighter, and try to shake the grey clouds from his head. 

“Enlightening enough?” He gets a weightless shrug in response, but there doesn’t seem to be as much malice in Harry’s face. 

 

During Louis’ session, Zayn opts for the large white canvas sitting emptily on the easel. Louis feels pressure apply itself to his body, as if a bigger surface requires something more from him. 

Zayn doesn’t seem to look at his face over the course of the hour, and Louis notes that Liam’s camera seems to cut him off at the neckline. 

The air between the filmmaker and artist is so oddly charged, and with the twister of thoughts and effort to hold still and project something other than doubt and misery in his posture, Louis is incapable of finding his place in it all. 

 

Outside, the sun has shown its face. Louis wonders if it’s done that on purpose.


	7. Chapter 7

The indoor track has been freshly preened and painted when Louis arrives at the complex. A fussy, waxy smell clings to the floor as he stretches, warming up alongside his teammates. 

He makes an effort to try not to compare their bodies to his own. It’s only a struggle until the drills start. 

 

Distractions are put on the back burner and Louis gets lost in it. Something finally clicks, some agreement between his head and his muscles and a fish-eye effect folds over his vision, blocking out anything that isn’t the motion of the ball. He feels primordial, numb to everything but this primal rush that leaps and sings through his body.

He makes a goal assist with crash landing bicycle kick, and his teammates cheer. He’s deaf to the disbelief in some of their voices.

 

Back at home, he dimly wonders if it was the smell of paint affecting him. 

He wakes feeling oddly refreshed. 

 

* * *

 

There’s a fierce tinge to the air as Louis crosses the campus, leg muscles creaking like ancient floorboards, thick and heavy with the strain of the practice match that was strung together the previous evening. 

His walk is accompanied by a damp, woodsy smell, and leaves bunching together on the ground, conspiring to clog drains and decay. 

 

There’s no one new in the studio, only Zayn and Liam this time, and something about them feels inviting today, doting almost, as he comes inside and greets them.

 

“You’re an angel for putting up with all of this,” Liam says, a mellow and joking flavour in his words as he sprays something viciously cold onto Louis’ abdomen.  
Louis’ sat back on his heels - atop the wooden chest again - with his hands resting on the bunch of his thighs. Looking down at Liam’s handiwork, he sees the outline of his abs, normally fainter in the slight plush of his stomach, lit up and catching the light from the windows. 

 

“We’re not really used to working with people who aren’t trained art models,” Zayn says, tone slow and conversational. Liam sweeps a section of Louis’ hair into place.

“Not really used to working with people with this many clothes on either,” Liam adds, dropping Louis a racy wink while snapping the waistband of his pants. Louis starts at the flat sting of it, dropping his head in an attempt to hide the blush threatening his cheeks. 

As Liam sets up the angle of the tripod in the back of the room, and Zayn smooths out a fresh page in his sketchbook, Louis flicks his eyes between the two. Both engaging, friendly and casual, and Louis can’t quite pinpoint what about them had seemed off during his previous sessions. 

By the time Zayn’s light voice is melodically coaxing him into an altered position, he’s managed to convince himself that they’ve never been anything short of engaging, friendly, casual, and that the thunderheads circling his brain had only kept him blind to it.

 

There’s isn’t as much of a pressing need to cover himself when Zayn finally sets his brushes down, pencil tucked behind his ear, end crooked and bitten. 

Louis takes his time in dressing, feeling sated and slow in the hazy rays of sunshine that flick in past the clouds. Liam steps in towards him, camera set down on the wooden chest.

“Do you have a night off this week?” He asks, raising a hand to smooth out the sleeves of Louis’ shirt over his shoulders.  
“Tonight, no practices tomorrow,” he replies, watching something spark and light up in Liam’s expression.

“Plans?” A barely restrained fervor clamors into his eyes.  
“I think you’re about to give me one,” Louis says, grinning at Liam’s enthusiasm.  
“Of course! I know a club, go there all the time, they have the best music, and all drinks are half off on Thursdays!”  
“And it’s Thursday!” Louis gasps, clasping his hands together for drama. Liam squawks in excitement, and they both laugh.

“You haven’t even asked if he wants any of that.” Zayn has his face twisted into a disapproving type of pout, but the twitch of his lips gives him away. His walk over to where they’re standing is just shy of a saunter. “I thought Louis was a good boy, no drinking on week nights...” he smiles winningly at Louis, who wrinkles his nose in playful disgust.  
“No drinking on practice nights,” he corrects, body lurching as Liam claps a heavy hand to his shoulder. 

“Take it down a notch though, Liam,” Zayn says, tone a bit more level. “We’ve got another model to finish.” Liam sighs dramatically.  
“Right. Maybe I can get today’s stuff edited before we go out. I’ll grab our model now,” he says, half mumbling to himself as he breaks into a spritely jog towards the door. “I’ll text you directions, Louis!” Louis and Zayn both watch in amusement as the door closed behind him. 

“Bit energetic, that one,” Louis observes, and Zayn laughs.  
“He’s practically a golden retriever,” he replies, shaking his head. There’s a slight pause, and Louis glances back towards the door, trying to time his own exit.

“You will come tonight, yeah?” Zayn asks, and Louis looks back towards him. It’s a bit much, the sun against the white walls, too bright and lighting up Zayn’s features, so close to his own. He’s standing slouched artfully to one side, looking up at Louis through dark eyelashes. 

Distantly, Louis can hear bells go off in his head. He feels like salivating. 

He nods, trying to find a smile that doesn’t make his face feel like it’s made of plasticine. He must succeed, because Zayn’s demeanor lights up to match the room, only twice as dazzling. 

“Good. Liam always disappears five minutes in. Need someone to keep me company.” Louis feels the air halfway up his throat dry up and crumble into dust. Some squeaking imitation of his voice attempts to squeak, and Louis kills it with a light cough. 

“Cool,” his response is everything but. “I’ll see you tonight.” A crooked smile snakes across Zayn’s face. It imprints against Louis’ eyelids and follows him home.

 

* * *

 

Liam’s text comes while he’s stepping out of the shower, a far-flung chirping from the other room. He reads it, damp and dripping, glancing at the clock. Over two hours before he needs to leave, plenty of time to tame both his hair and the unease that inevitably coils through his intestines. 

He silences his anticipation with the noisy roar of his blow dryer. 

Standing in front of his closet, actively ignoring dejection, he debates whether or not it’s too early to start pre-gaming.  
He decides _not._

 

Fussing over his clothes passes the time. Jeans were easy, just choosing something black and reasonably fitted, settling for something stretchy that lets him move a little. A suitable shirt proves to be a challenge, as a growing pile of rejected ones at the floor of his closet demonstrates. He finally decides on something short sleeved and low necked, maroon to match the wine balanced on his bedside table. 

 

He pivots in front of his bathroom mirror meticulously, tweaking pieces of his hair, spiraling them into a quiff that droops to the side almost immediately. Refilling his glass and glowering at his reflection, he manages to salvage it into something windswept. It takes several rinses to get the smell of product off his palms.

 

 

Liam meets him outside the club. It’s one of those modern places, a refurnished old building with a light blue neon marquee. 

Inside it’s low-ceilinged with sleek imitation pinewood flooring. The lighting at the booths and bar is a sultry magenta, both already near-filled. 

They manage to squeeze their way in, Liam ordering for both of them and clinking their glasses together obnoxiously. Louis must be projecting some kind of anxious energy, because soon after, Liam leans in close.  
“Zayn’s not here yet,” and a guilty flush creeps up Louis’ neck. Liam looks knowing but unaffected. “Couple other people are on their way.”  
“Well they’ll have to catch up with us, then,” Louis says, downing half his drink and repressing a shudder. This seems to please Liam, and he pats his shoulder with aggressive amiability. 

 

Louis is steps closer to drunkenness when Zayn finds them where they’ve managed to snag a booth to themselves off to the side of the dance floor. Louis lights up as he spots him, and tries to wean the exuberance out of his greeting. His words flatly drop to the floor as he spots Harry behind him, looking blank and broody as they approach the booth. 

“You finally made it!” Liam gloats, raising an empty glass to nod at the newcomers.  
“Fashionably late,” Zayn shoots back, giving Louis a smile he decides is far too private for their setting. He returns it, shooting for coy, and worrying it comes out shy. 

There’s a stiff silence, and Harry pointedly clears his throat, nodding to Liam over Zayn and Louis’ heads. 

“Let’s get you some drinks, then,” Liam says, standing up and running a hand suavely over the distressed leather of Zayn’s jacket, holding his arm out invitingly. There’s a hesitation in which Zayn takes the time to scan his eyes over Louis’ outfit when he sits at the edge of the booth. Harry brushes past Zayn from behind, nudging his shoulder into Liam, directing him towards the bar, and they both move away. 

Zayn slips in to sit at the table, across from Louis, his eyes dark and magnetic in the low and neon lighting. It’s unclear to Louis whether it’s tension or his own slippery and mild self doubt, but something seats itself between them. 

A gap, waiting patiently to be filled with words stretches itself out, and Louis swirls his tongue inside his mouth, searching for a conversation between his teeth. 

“I’ve never been here before,” he finds. 

“Really?” Zayn’s eyebrows arch. “Liam drags me here all the time. Can’t remember the last time I was anywhere else.”  
“He kept swearing by the music, but I haven’t been all that impressed yet,” Louis says, waving a hand over to where the speakers were obstructed by moving bodies. Zayn gives an amused scoff in response.  
“Liam’s more than satisfied with the top forty. True popstar at heart, that one.” Louis hides his grin behind his glass. 

Small talk passes the time before Liam returns with their second round of drinks, Harry in tow looking out of place, not uncomfortable but decidedly unimpressed. He stays for a handful of shots, face unflinching as he swallows, before smoothly removing himself from the table, and disappearing into the heart of the noise and riot.

Louis has half a mind to follow him. The bizarre combinations offending his tongue is barely a pleasant chaser for the way Zayn’s eyes are burning holes in him from across the table, making him squirm, or the way Liam observes the exchange, gaze fiery and tinted pink from the lights. 

He tries half-heartedly to strike up and then follow a conversation, but as more empty glasses occupy the table, three feels more and more like a crowd, and he excuses himself, walk a touch unsteady as he moseys his way towards the club bathrooms.

 

In the time it takes to get there, endure the line, and traipse his way back, the alcohol has made an impressive appearance into both his bloodstream and his balance. 

 

Harry is standing in his path, halfway between the bar and the dance floor, and as he attempts to cooly swing around the taller figure, his walk disintegrates into a stumble, and he knocks into him. Harry - decidedly more coordinated than Louis even without the handicap of alcohol - springs his arms out reflexively, catching him with one hand around the waist, the other higher up his back. Louis scrambles to collect his footing, planting his feet wider apart and waiting for the motion in his head to slow from impact.

Harry's hand lingers briefly on his back, fingers brushing his spinal column with a startling firmness. Underneath the pressure, Louis' shirt feels sticky, tacked to his skin with the damp adhesive crawling from his pores and suffocating him under the lights.

 

"Shit, sorry," a mumbled apology falls from his mouth, as clumsy as the rest of him. "Guess you don't have a problem losing your balance, huh?" He tilts his head up - the angle feels wrong, overdone - and he catches Harry's pale eyes locked on his. Louis' own feel unfocused, like a camera shutter opening and closing too quickly to capture the image before them. 

"Pretty good on your feet…that's your whole job, isn't it? Just don't fall over…" Harry's brow creases further, hand still a heavy and steadying presence on his back, slipping lower and Louis wedges his shoulder against Harry's broad chest.  
"I mean, more to it than that…'course…just meant…what did I mean? You. Graceful and that." He frowns at his words, twisting around to blink up at Harry, who's staring at him with a look that's fixed and indecipherable.

"Graceful and that," he echoes after a long pause.  
“Graceful and that," Louis confirms, "like a cat." Harry blinks at him. "Have to be a big cat though, like a leopard or something. Jesus, you're huge." Louis detaches himself from Harry's steadying hand and walks in a curved line towards their booth. 

Liam is nowhere to be seen, but Zayn is talking comfortably with a girl - the white-blonde dancer from the studio. The bronze rings on her fingers are catching the light, and casting copper shadows onto the table, round and flickering. 

He squeezes unceremoniously into the booth beside the girl, smiling winningly at her, then at Zayn on the other side. 

"I," he announces with a thick tongue, "am drunk." The girl smirks at him, and Zayn's greeting smile twists into a gruesome leer as he leans in, flicking the end of Louis' nose.  
"You are drunk," he says agreeably, quirking an eyebrow at the girl across the table.  
"But not drunk enough," she chimes in, her voice low and husky and lovely. Louis sidles up to her.  
"I like you," he said decisively. "More drinks?" There's an affirmative murmur and Louis inches himself back out, swaying slightly as he stands, makes his way towards the bar at the back. He collides with a warm body, and two muscly arms reach out to take hold of his shoulders, holding him upright. Reflex has him pushing his arms up to the chest of the body, trying to take a step back, but his eyes light up as he recognizes the face peering down at him with amused concern.

"Liam!"  
"Enjoying yourself then?" Liam asks, not removing his hands from Louis' shoulders.  
"Great time. Haven't been out properly in ages," Louis says honestly, trying to maneuver Liam's hold on him so that they're both facing towards the bar.

"Getting us more drinks," he explains, tugging at one of Liam's hands, and mashing their fingers together.  
"Sure you need more?" Liam asks, laughing and giving Louis' hands a squeeze. He nods determinedly. 

"'Course. Need your help carrying though."  
"Of course…" Liam guides him up to the bar and drops his hands, rolling up the sleeves of his light blue button down as they wait. His forearms are thick, and looping scrawls of black ink dance up under the cuffs of his shirt, illegible with the way Louis' eyes are trailing over the slight bulge of his veins, distracted. An upwards glance shows Liam looking at him, almost expectantly.

"You don't seem very drunk," Louis manages, and the corners of Liam's lips twitch up, pink and playful.  
"No…got caught up chatting with someone…" Louis whistles suggestively and Liam pulls a face. "Guess I need to catch up with you…" Louis cheers at this, leaning across the bar to order, passing the bartender a few bills.

"You're way behind," he scolds, slapping Liam's arm. "Here." He hands him a tall glass of something red and does his best to lift the tray of shot glasses carefully. 

"Thanks. Need some help?" Liam asks, taking a sip of his drink and making a sour face.  
"Yeah, grab the other one!" Louis says, turning and beginning a slow shuffle back to the table.  
"Other…for god's sake.." Liam mutters, turning to find a twin tray of shots being poured, laughing at the bartender's unaffected shrug. 

 

The conversation is a constant dribble. Their entire table is suffocating with the fruity and chemical smell of hairspray, and the mildly bitter scent of beer that has overtaken the entire floor. The tabletop made of finely polished black cherry wood, but underneath feet peeled tackily off the sticky tiles. 

Louis is rediscovering his hatred for straight vodka, chasing it down an overly sweet cocktail that leaves him grimacing, eyes beginning to tear up with the burn of it all. His vision clears as he hears Liam say, “mate! Join us!” and looks over in time to see Harry stalking over to the table. The dim lighting is flickering in his eyes, turning them dark and tawny. He gives the group a once over before fitting his large frame into the booth beside Louis without sparing him a glance or greeting. 

 

Conversation trickles down to Zayn and Liam’s hushed and seemingly private conversation, and the contentiously playful banter striking up between Louis and the blonde beside him, who is matching him shot for shot in between sending dejected glares across the table.

 

Louis combats the intimacy of Zayn’s eyes fixedly watching Liam’s mouth as he talks with mouthfuls of the dark burgundy liquid in his glass. Harry’s milk white skin is catching the club lights, bright and distracting in the corner of Louis’ eye, so he angles his body away, catching an eyeful of shocking red lipstick and pink blush. A bizarre clash, but decidedly better than a well-muscled scowl, or the intensity of Zayn’s dark stare catching Liam’s, lips quirking up knowingly, and slyly. As the burn leaves the back of his throat and settles into a warming tingle through his limbs, it becomes less of a challenge to ignore. 

 

A bass-thick beat is thrumming through the place, catching in ribcages and the soles of shoes, pulling at bodies and luring them out onto the floor. The heat and sway of the bodies neighbouring their table slowly advances, and finally Louis slaps a hand disgustedly to the table, hauling himself out of the booth - shoving Harry out beside him - all sharp angles and annoyed huffing.

“Somebody’s got to show these kids how to move properly,” he says in irritation, smoothing down the front of his shirt and looking at his still seated companions.

“Any takers?” The blonde eyes the pair across the table. Zayn is slouched comfortably against Liam’s shoulder, fingers tracing shapes on the tabletop in the condensation pooling beneath the graveyard of empty glasses in front of them. Liam glances up at Louis, eyes moving slowly from him to the mass of bodies under the lights, distaste curling his features slightly.

“Really is a sad looking bunch,” Liam says breezily, “Shall we?” It’s unclear who his offer is made towards until Zayn shrugs, shoulders swallowed in leather, and motions for Liam to scoot out.

“Fine,” the girl says, tone icy and eyes matching until they land on Louis, and she slides out and comes towards him, ducking under his arm and steering them towards the crowd.

“Are you _using_ me?” Louis says into the side of her head - all teased hair and citrus scented.  
“Yep.” She turns slightly, grinning back at him, and he laughs in drunk delight against her neck. 

“He’s such a tease,” he says, talking directly into her ear as they find a clearing in the din. She winces, but agrees.  
“You too, huh?” He merely shrugs, letting her drape her arms around his neck and mold their bodies together. Their movements line up, oh so casual, as the music drips and sweats through the air around them. 

“You’re _tiny,”_ Louis says, words slurring around a mouthful of white-blonde hair, and she laughs, throaty and smoke soft. Her hands dip down, light and fluttery, teasing above the waistline of his jeans at the back.  
“Bet you’re used to being the tiny one, huh?” She says, lipstick hot against the shell of his ear, and he squeaks as she digs a fingernail into the dip of his back, giggling breathlessly, helplessly, into her neck. 

“Whatever are you implying,” his words press damply to her skin, and it’s her turn to laugh.  
“Oh, nothing, dear,” she says, making a show of rolling her eyes, her smile unhidden and blatant. Around them the music pulses, a living thing that slopes and slithers, raising hairs like questions, and letting the wet and flexing bodies answer them, words lost to the noise, unmissed and unnecessary.

“What’s your name?” Louis asks, shouting through the pounding static. She tilts her head, says something back, which is immediately lost to the roar.  
_“What?”_ Both laughing now, she drags him, staggering slightly away from the speakers.

_“Perrie,”_ she repeats, arching up in her heels and hauling him closer by the ear. He winces, letting the sharp burn reach down the side of his face like a bolt of lightning, and he tightens his grip on her hips, marveling at the combined feeling of soft and solid. 

“Hi Perrie,” he says, grinning down at her, and she purses her lips dramatically, sending them both off laughing again. The wave and pulse of the music catches up to them again, and her legs - bare and near glowing with their whiteness under the yellow light - slide between his, purposeless save for keeping them upright. 

 

Blending into the crowd around them, they sway with the tidal movements, and take turns scowling over to where Zayn has found some other girl - all thin limbs and brown hair - and broken her away from her group. Slightly apart from them, Liam catches Louis’ eye, sending him a questioning look, directed at where his hands are positioned on Perrie’s waist, and the way she is pushing into his hold. Louis angled them slightly, pointedly looking at where Zayn has his body pressed flush to the brunette, and raises his eyebrows at Liam.  
Liam turns towards Zayn again, looking daggers at him over the girl’s shoulder. Zayn is grinning - more of that grotesque flash of perfect teeth - his hands scaled, and sliding down her body.

“Let’s leave them to their silly games,” Perrie speaks into Louis’ ear, and he snorts, rotating his feet so that his back is to the others, marginally toppling Perrie in her heels, and she falls against his chest, knocking them backwards, her laughing up at him as they compose themselves. The sound is rich and dark, rising with the weighted melodies strung out over and around the floor.

“I like your laugh,” he says, mouth fixed in a smile against her cheek, and she reaches up, grabbing a handful of his hair.  
“Do you get straight when you’re drunk?” She levels back, tugging.  
“No,” he says, devolving into a drunk hiccupy titter, the crowd and noise swelling. He feels her grin against the side of his face, and shuts his eyes, watching the lights dance patterns against his eyelids: _red, green, yellow, white…_

 

The music has become a sooty vibration that runs through bones, teasingly, and surrounding details fade, leaving only the things within reach possible to focus on. Speech and control slip away, leaving Louis with only the pointed flick of Perrie’s winged eyeliner, and how pale it turned the blue of her eyes. 

 

Louis’ collar is soaked through. The distortion in the speakers is turning into a monstrous electric hum, spinning the base for headaches like webs, sticky and lethal, but for now, so heady and wanton.

 

Perrie pulls away, shouting something to him about heading to the bar, and he lets her lead him by the arm out of the swell of sweat and colour. 

 

His clothes feel damp, skin slick, and mouth matching as he swallows the bittersweet drink passed to him, lips coated and tasting of cough syrup and Listerine. A hot burn shoots through his throat, leaving a trail of shooting stars, needles and pins in its wake. He blinks away the blur, looking over to see Perrie saying something, motioning, before vanishing back into the ocean of arms and skulls. He makes to follow, but the dance floor has transformed itself into a labyrinth, with walls made of flesh and figures, replicated shapes swathed in multicoloured lights, his feet tracking circles on the floor. As he tries to squeeze through a gap in a particularly rowdy section of the hopeless maze, he catches an inebriated elbow in the ribs, and lurches to the side, nearly falling, but instead colliding with a body, massive against his own, and the grip of two impossibly large hands appear around his wrists, which were thrown up against the unyielding chest to break his fall.  
He looks up with a bout of fear and expectation of seeing something fierce and bullheaded, but instead is met with something pale eyed - fierce but not bovine.  
And _familiar,_ although the glaze coating the fixed stare is something new, hazy and clouded, and looking very much the way Louis imagines his own do.

 

“Hi,” he says, tasting the way the word draws itself out, trying to untangle his wrists from where they are trapped, pressed tight together.

“Hi,” Harry repeats, just barely loosening his grip, and watching as Louis loses his footing again. 

“‘M a bit tipsy,” Louis says, stumbling forwards without the balancing pressure, and Harry tightens his fingers again.

“A bit.” Harry’s voice is condescending even through the shrieks of electrical instruments and pulsing roar of the crowd.  
“Finally have something in common!” Louis says, beaming crookedly, still trying to wrestle his hands away. He hesitates, narrowing his eyes, and trying to look around at the unfamiliar faces that surround them. 

 

“I lost Perrie.” Harry looks at him blankly.  
“We were dancing. But she got lost. It’s a labyrinth,” Louis babbles, attempting to use a hand to gesture, but frowning as he sees they’re still trapped. A shadow of something akin to amusement crosses Harry’s face. 

“I think this is the middle of it,” Louis continues, squinting at the walls of people, “except you haven’t got the, you know,” he wrenches his arms, managing to loosen one hand, reaching up to Harry’s head, and he ducks back.

“Haven’t got what?” He asks, dropped Louis’ arm and moving his hands down around his waist, holding him at a distance, eyeing the hand grappling towards him warily.

“You know, _horns,”_ Louis drops his hand. “Perrie’s lost,” he adds, morose, and following it up with a shrug. 

“Tragic,” Harry says, sounding less than sympathetic. Louis shrugs again, his shoulders not quite mirroring each other, and he presses his face into the fabric of Harry’s shirt, breathing in the sour and musky scent it’s marinated in. Harry tenses beneath him, and Louis pulls back quickly, gaze unfocused as he tries to catch his eye.

“No, no don’t be a dickhead,” he says chidingly. “Just dance with me... because I’m going to fall over if you don’t.” Harry barks out a sound that could have been a laugh coming from someone else, and Louis nods approvingly, watching the lights bounce wildly behind his eyes as he does. 

 

The ebb and flow of the crowd push them closer to the front, where the speakers grew up out of the floor and tower over them. The steady assault on ears and temples is almost overpowering, and Louis drops his head, full and spinning, pressing his forehead to where Harry’s shoulder meets collarbone.  
Through the giddy stupor Louis wonders briefly if he’s going to push him off, cast him out with a dry and biting comment and flounce off, and glances upwards in surprise when Harry only sighs sufferingly, and pulls him in closer. 

His upwards glance is met with the pale curve of Harry’s throat, and he raises his arms to fall around his neck, letting them dangle limply. As coordination flees his body, Louis sags forwards, letting Harry support his weight.  
Harry’s hands lock on his hips, forming handprints on the skin hidden by his shirt, feeling both violent and vigilant. 

“Don’t drop me,” Louis mutters into Harry’s neck, barely parting his lips enough to let the words escape. Harry answers, inaudible, but still reaching Louis through his ribcage as a low rumble through Harry’s throat, and in the way he curls his fingers impossibly tighter.  
Louis wiggles his hips closer, fitting a leg in between Harry’s gracelessly, and purring at the feel. Their movements blur together, Harry’s intrinsic, and Louis’ passable, unmatched and intertwining. Louis exhales shallowly, breath hot against Harry’s neck, and he imagines his skin fogging up like glass, translucent and ready for fingers to draw on shapes and words, backwards from the inside, but clear from where he stood, looking in.

 

Coherency died down, and then entirely, replaced with a murderously slow grind like the gears of some terrible machine, and the smell and sound of faceless and sweating strangers. 

 

The music is stuck, going over the same two notes in Louis’ head, again and again, lyrics indistinguishable and unrelenting in their sameness. The bass drops feel random and nauseating, each one a missed step on the stairs, and Louis feels queasy, stomach rolling and vision doubled, tripled, blurring the lights into lines streaking across his vision, caught on eyelashes and strung out. He rolls his fingers experimentally and slides his hand down Harry’s neck like an eel, leaning in to speak into his ear.

“Going to get some air,” he says, listening to the words swirl together and disintegrate before they touch his tongue. 

_“What?”_ Harry’s face is confusion and dark concentration combined, and Louis feels a laugh oozing out.

_“Air,”_ he shouts, swinging an arm in the general direction of the exit, and it’s a miracle he doesn’t hit someone.  
A faint light of understanding turns on in Harry’s face, and he nods, turning Louis around and pushing into his back, driving him forwards. The sudden change of direction and distribution of balance sends Louis reeling, tripping over his own feet, but Harry manages to keep him upright. 

Their jolting and jarring siamese steps do nothing for the maelstrom threatening to brew in Louis’ stomach, fussy and whinging. He considers asking Harry to carry him, but both the request and the thought of wording it seem absurd and impossible. The bar approaches, mirage-like and fantastical, swarming with insectoid patrons, shelled and small-eyed. Louis’ feet slow then stop, tangling at the ankles and nearly crashing. 

“No...not there, don’t want to go there,” he says, nasally and peeling off into high pitched whining. He blinks unevenly, looking at the clear rows of glasses on the backing shelf, and the bottles underneath, too many different shapes and sizes, too much, all glass and liquid, everything clear or something like it, reflecting the lights, one million tiny mirrors.

“Where, then?” Harry’s voice is heavy and wetly impatient, and Louis can feel the brick wall of his body against his back, all hardened muscle, and the hot press of his groin against the curve of his lower back. Heavy, impatient, and he pushes back into him, too many drinks from too many glass bottles, and too much of these coloured lights, _white, yellow, green, red,_ playing in his head. Heavy, impatient; both the body and the voice behind him, a question he was meant to be answering.

“Home,” Louis says, the word tasting syrupy and wormlike, spread out across his leaden tongue. 

 

Taxis are lined up along the pavement in ready wait, lit up and smug in their convenience.

 

Street lamps and traffic lights whirl past outside the windows, so plain and pedestrian, hardly offering up a distraction from the motion of the road. 

 

The pull of the elevator is ungodly, stirring up a facsimile of seasickness, and aggravating the failure of agreeability in Louis’ legs and the tameness in Harry’s fingers.

After a brief struggle, Louis’ key finally allows itself to be slid into the lock, and the door opens, one hand churning dumbly at the doorknob, one pressed flat and clammy to the frame, another knuckled and bared against a dip of spine, a fourth spidering around a shoulder, venomous and suction-cupped.  
Louis struggles with the math of it all, stepping across the threshold of his flat, his gait a caterwaul. Possibly too many hands, and certainly too many fingers. 

Inside it’s stale with silence, everything analog and mute in the dark. The swirling and unease in his stomach has quieted too, reassigning and attacking his toes with a boorish breed of grace, twisting the right ones around the other way and leading him crookedly into and through the kitchen, his own legs desperate to be introduced to the legs of his dining room table, and they smack together in a less than Harlequin embrace. The colossal shape that has shadowed him from the door is quick to delve in, biting the startled yelp from his tongue, hands sealing his dampened shirt to his body in a rough but smooth caress. Heat is boiling in a blurred path through and along his inner arms, running like wires beneath his skin, electric and live. His thighs quake as they attempt to house and hold the current, lightly at first, but erupting into something crazed and untamed as a flat-palmed touch spreads them apart and sinks in. 

Louis’ back meets the grain of the tabletop in one even splay, spine stretching and hips straining to find friction. A low and needy noise skates its way across his lips. It jumps the closing gap and throws itself down the closest throat it can find.  
Harry swallows the echo and licks the reverberation from the end of Louis’ tongue. Another noise crawls out, this time a dulled frustration, cut off in an attempt to sit up, all elbows against table and muscles twitching against skin.

“No,” he protests, a soggy sounding word dripping from beneath a pout as he’s pushed flush back against the table. There’s a pause, stiff and ungainly in the darkness. 

“Not _here,”_ he says, slurring seriousness into the mouth that has pulled back, slackened slightly. “‘S gross, I eat here,” the sound trails off, punctuated with faint watery panting, but sounding lyrical, spoken through a mouthful of sodden teeth.

The silence breaks again with the awful, low pitched squealing of skin being hauled off a table through a thin layer of sweaty material. It sounds pig-like in the dark. Harry towers over him, the tremors in his arms so strong they’re almost visible through the dark, and he exhales a foul-breathed growl against his neck. Louis’ feels his jugular ache and leap, blood rushing, maniacal and unconsolable, down through the caving of his body to his cock. He presses forwards, spine now a concave arch, desperate and writhing.

“Back up...back _up,”_ he grouses, childish and demanding, managing to toe off one shoe and grapple a hand out along the wall when Harry’s back slams against it as he complies. 

Louis’ fingers blindly come in contact with the light switch, and angry yellow light screams a riot through the blackness, sinking white hot teeth into eyes and sending eclipsing pupils wailing back inside themselves. Harry swears, a dark and bottomless sound, nipping the flesh of Louis’ neck and dyeing it a bright and tender pink instantly.  
Louis’ moans, one thousand times brighter and not at all tenderly. 

 

They fill the hall with the slow swerve of brash footsteps, crashing inelegantly into the doorframe of Louis’ bedroom, and make a multi-limbed pass for the bed, tripping over his laptop cord, coiled and haphazard. Harry curses again as they come down hard on the mattress, Louis feeling the air rush out of his lungs as Harry’s chest flattens out against his, and then gasp back in as their mouths align, wet and rectifying. 

Harry’s tongue is sour as it catches and runs along the ridges of Louis’ teeth. Eager and overzealous, Louis shoves his hands up under Harry’s shirt, nails catching skin and raising welted lines. On top of him, Harry makes a noise, black and warning, and he draws back, pushing Louis’ hands back against his own chest. Ignoring the pleading sound Louis starts emanating, he pulls back further, peeling his shirt off from where it has glued to his back like a second skin, shucking his shoes from his heels. Louis’ insistent grabbing hands draw him back in, and their skulls knock together, painless in intent. Louis’ shirt is rucked up around his armpits, and Harry’s knee knocks his apart. Louis’ legs spread easily, the lines of his body drawn whorishly across the mattress.

The distant light from the hall has colours coming in vibrant shrieks or not at all - the background a blur, grey and dizzying, Harry’s eyes a shock of green, mouth violently pink. Louis’ fingers are bloodless and trembling fiercely as he hooks them into the clasp of Harry’s belt, ardent but useless and Harry slaps them away, leaving Louis to drool with the sting of it as he unbuckles it himself. 

Flies undone, he moves forwards again, letting Louis tug his waistband down and grapple inside, his breath seeping out in an airy moan. Hunching forwards, Harry catches himself on the mattress, propping up over Louis on an elbow, his other hand tangling into Louis’ sweat knotted hair and pulling it tight.  
Louis writhes, one wrist at an awful angle inside Harry’s pants, and the other hand shoving down his own, popping the button and wriggling his hips under the weight of the larger body. 

The rough edge of Louis’ thumbnail snags at the head of Harry’s cock, and he snarls, sucking Louis’ earlobe into his mouth and biting down, hard enough for Louis’ grip to tighten, white knuckled around them both and heart frantic in his chest. Harry lunges back, pulling Louis’ jeans down his thighs in one pull, swift and enraged, the fabric dragging in dry, delicious friction against his skin. Louis’ skull digs back into the blankets, eyes closing in a blackout stutter as he gets a better hold of himself, breath held tensely until Harry climbs back on top of him, his energy ruthless and hold encompassing, tearing Louis’ hand away from himself, eyes lethal. 

Harry’s hands burrow roughly up under the thin material of Louis’ pants, and he presses the tip of his index finger against the rim of his hole, slack-muscled but dry, and Louis jerks away from the assaulting digit. Harry groans, a guttural sigh, running a hand up Louis’ perspiration slick body and shoving a finger past Louis’ lips, his front teeth catching the cuticle as he makes a startled noise. 

Coated and shining with saliva, Harry retracts his finger, guiding his hand back down, and up through the leg hole of Louis’ pants, now stretching obscenely to the side and over his cock, bent at an angle and leaking against the fabric. 

This time his finger slips in further, but Louis still squirms uncomfortably, not wet enough to be painless, and Harry makes a dark sound in his throat, removing his finger to grab a handful of Louis‘ arse, breath hot against the side of his face.  
  “D’you have anything?” Louis inches his shoulders up over the duvet, one hand edging forward to wrap in a death grip around Harry’s member, flushed and almost violet. 

“Bathroom,” he says, a line of spit stretching from his teeth out across the corner of his lips. His fingers sloppily run along the head, gathering the beaded wetness and spreading it down along the sides, thumb tracing the engorged vein with varying pressure. A deep sound, faint as thunder winds its way out of Harry’s throat, and he licks a flat-tongued line up Louis’ neck. 

“Fuck it,” he breathes, fingers creeping up to the elastic of Louis’ pants and wrenching them down, exposing him to the air and following the shudder than runs through his body with hungry eyes. 

Panic, diluted and slow dawning flickers onto Louis’ face like static signals across a screen. He wrestles his arms back, trying to draw his knees up to his chest, but his legs tangle in a trapped flail, caught in the fabric of his jeans, and beneath the weight of Harry’s thighs. Harry stops the struggle with a hand pressed down over Louis’ solar plexus, fingers splayed out, spelling finality with their reach. 

“Wait...Harry,” the name feels foreign and bitter in his mouth, catching in a loose rasp at the base of his throat.

“Don’t want to wait,” Harry snaps back, words blurring in their ferocity. “Here, just like this,” he tugs Louis’ legs back down, burying a hand in his hair, fisting it closed around a stringy, damp handful, pushing it off his brow in the process. Louis’ lips part in understanding as Harry’s free hand slides down the slick between their bodies and wrap circularly around his cock, lining his own up against it. He drags his hips up slowly, and the springs underneath their bodies cry out. Louis bucks his hips up into the movement in response, stomach flipping at the hot weight of it, moaning high and brazen as Harry yanks his hair back with intent. Louis’ neck bared, Harry lowers his head, teeth closing in, and sucking hard enough to draw the breath from Louis’ lungs, shallow and ashen. 

 

The patchwork rhythm of their bodies is sewing a hood over Louis’ eyes, and his fingertips slow dance across the leaden stretch of Harry’s shoulder blades. Small noises are fogging through the slivers of air between Louis’ mouth and Harry’s chest, high and feathered. One particularly hard grind has him crying out, blunt nails latching into skin, and Harry shushes him, comfortingly monstrous. 

“Harry...wait...stop...” each word is separated by a series of throaty vowels, and Harry freezes above him, then draws back up like a marionette. “Move,” Louis adds, and Harry’s body shifts back, the balls of his feet finding the carpet and shuffling upright, backwards. Unpinned, Louis shifts his spine along the sheets, joints and limbs twisting limply, and dropping without grace to the floor, arms soft boiled and reaching towards the solid thickness of Harry’s legs, giving them a feeble tug.  
Even with the whole of his strength and coordination, he doubts he could have moved him two inches, but Harry gets the hint, gliding to the side, and sitting back against the mattress when the backs of his knees touch box spring. 

Louis shifts forwards on his knees, the carpet suddenly made of a million sand-papered cat’s tongues, licking up against his skin with a malevolent purr. The soft placement of his hand against Harry’s bare hip looks doll-like, cast in the shadow from the hall, and a thick grip on the back of Louis’ neck draws him in, wrapping into his hair.  
Harry’s cock is thick and dangerous up close, and Louis parts his lips, ducking in quick and clumsily to wrap around the head, drowning in the overpowering scent of musk and vinegar.  
It feels snail-like against his tongue, and he shuts his eyes, blinking damp butterfly kisses against the smooth skin stretched across Harry’s abs. Only less than halfway in, the girth has Louis’ mouth pulling uncomfortably at the seams, lips chapped slightly and threatening to split at the edges, so he moves a hand to play idly with the rest, nerves barely responding as the sweet, dizzying rush pounds through his blood.  
Harry must be feeling the same; with each unhinged twist of Louis’ head and listlessly eager press of his tongue, the grip in his hair - now matted and wormy - pulls tighter.

 

Time seems to stammer, the lights in Louis’ brain blinking off in every department that isn’t the dim concept of stabbing hot pleasure and the most basic of motor controls. The hand dropped down between his own legs is barely moving, just the dry press of palm, half-cupped, and the faint dip of his hips in time to the bobbing of his head. 

It feels molasses slow, but enough for the drone in his head, both their heads, because a moment later Harry is moaning something thick and carnal, something that might have been Louis' name - if he could bring himself to remember the sound and letters of his own name.  
Louis' head feels worm-holed and membranous, spinning and unsettled, struck by the heavens and seeing stars, but unable to count them. A brush of Harry's fingers and Louis feels something inside himself lurch, as if someone has pulled the rug out from under his feet and he's tumbling, crashing into the earth. He feels earthy, can feel the grit and grime beneath his skin and fingernails, all black and sending strings of guilt shooting through his spinal cord. 

Louis feels Harry's release hit the back of his throat and he gags, choking as it fills his mouth and slips down, watery and bitter, thinly coating his throat and attacking his sinuses. Through bleary, watering eyes Louis watches the rise and fall of Harry’s chest, steadying, slowing, and the shadowy stretch of his arms coming to brace on either side of his waist, drawing him up, and around, then pushing him back against the mattress. The backs of his thighs are pushed down, feeling the cool and damp patches of the bedsheets he had sweated through, held down by the weight and control of Harry’s hands, and he wriggled fussily, trying to roll sideways onto a drier spot.  
Harry lashes out, slapping a hand across the smaller boy's hip and holding him in place with a tight grip on the reddening skin. 

Louis immediately becomes docile, and the heavy pulse of his cock twitches, the slit spitting out a bleary mouthful of pre-come that smears across the firm, granite slab of Harry’s stomach as he leans over him. Between Louis’ knees Harry’s cock is softening, deflating down to hang at a tamer angle, still larger than Louis’ even in its spent state. 

The damp grind of Harry’s palm up his inner thigh brings a pleading whimper out across Louis’ tongue, briny with come and coated with an alcoholic film. Deft and clammy fingers trace a wavering line down the column of his throat. Above, cast in shadows, Harry’s eyes are wild, clouded and appraising.

“More,” Louis’ mouth is making sounds again, this time shaped like and sounding almost like words. “Something, just, _fuck - fuck,_ hit me, _harder, please_ \- “ 

“Enough,” Harry’s voice is iron grating against stone, but slogged down, and it barely combats the fire licking Louis’ bones, scathing his organs.

_“It’s not enough,”_ Louis’ toes and tongue are curling, body mewling.  
“This is all you’re getting.” Harry’s hands come reaching, one hand wrapping around Louis’ throat, just shy of cutting off his air, the other bold enough to sink down around his cock, disappearing it into the conjured ring of his fingers.

_“No!”_ Louis protests thin-throatedly, mind strangling to clarify when the swell of friction fades, pressure leaves his neck. 

“No… _more!”_ The word tears itself away from his vocal cords, hands crawling, crablike, up the plane of Harry’s chest, finger painting shadows against the blank canvas.

“Want more,” he whimpers, pathetic and pale. Harry growls again, vicious and feral in frustration, and digs a claw-like hand into the meat of Louis’ thigh, wrenching it without warning to an evil angle against the bedsheets. Louis’ whine turns into a shrieking moan as Harry holds him there, twisted and posed like a broken doll, pinning him easily, back muscles rippling like a dark wave. 

_“This,”_ leaning in, he hisses a black-winged promise to the shell of Louis’ ear, _“is all you’re getting.”_ Fingers creep down - too gentle to be paralleled with such a dripping and malevolent tone - and sweetly curve around the silken length of Louis’ cock, angrily weeping between their bodies. 

His orgasm slams in, fast and devastating. 

Then enveloping unconsciousness.


	8. Chapter 8

Despite being accustomed to waking up sprawled out with the bed to himself, it feels wrong as soon as morning rouses him. 

His bladder is screaming, drowned out by the banshee that has taken up residence in his skull. Beneath the pain splitting his seams apart, he’s distantly aware of an oily, biting smell rising from his skin.

A darker, weighted scent is hanging to his sheets with clawed nails, like some wild animal rolled and rubbed itself over them, marking its territory, claiming its place. 

 

The weight and roll of his stomach forbids him to think of it. 

 

Some part of him wants nothing more than to curl inwards and ignore the needs and signs his body is underlining, but reality is crushing, and he hauls himself upright.

Every bunch of nerves in his body group and convulse, off-key instruments slamming out the same shrill series of notes again and again, reaching his brain like a shrieking calliope. 

 

Getting to the bathroom is an effort he’s not entirely certain he’ll manage to accomplish. His hands are cool and sweating, and he leaves a greasy smear against the wall as he trails himself down the hallway, stomach tight and legs jelly. 

The demons in his head are smashing pots and pans against his skull, and in a pathetic moment he imagines just sinking down and curling up on the floor. Harry’s gone - long gone, judging by the state of the bed, and it’s almost easy to debate producing another lick of shame for an instance of comfort.

 

He makes it, too nauseous and aching to celebrate the miracle. He enters the room, ignoring the light switch, his feet scuffing onto ceramic tile, blessedly cool.

 

* * *

Liam’s text comes mid-afternoon, cellphone buzzing a deafening skitter across the living room table. Louis is lifeless on the couch, blinds drawn, one hand balled into a fist and pressed to his forehead.

_How’s the hangover? ;)_

Louis never took the time before to appreciate how smug and all seeing a winking emoticon could be. The mere ordeal of sitting semi-upright to reach his phone has the clenching starting up again in his stomach, and it’s a fight to get it to settle again. There’s a stiff pressure toying with his back, pulled out of sorts from retching, and the thin lines of light creeping past the barricade of curtain are stabbing hot pokers into his retinas. 

His reply, a simple _‘fuck off,’_ takes over a minute to type out. 

 

* * *

 

The sun has already begun it’s descent across the sky by the time Louis finds himself capable of getting up, and putting something in his stomach besides water. 

 

Later, in the shower, he eases into the water, warmer and warmer, until the wrenched muscles in his back soften up into something almost bearable. 

 

He tries not to dwell on the discolouration of his skin at the juncture of his neck. 

 

By the time the water has run cold, Louis’ skin is a pale pink, a sweetly innocent hue. It’s grotesquely paralleled with a shadowy grip haunting his thigh, four perfect fingerprints indented in purple, a neat little line. 

He pretends he isn’t disappointed when he presses them and finds it painless. 

 

He doesn’t bother changing his sheets before climbing under them. 

 

Morning barrels in after what feels like not-enough sleep, alarm clock ear splitting. Louis curses it, the menace in his voice distorted through a yawn. The desire to fall back asleep looms, but practice and responsibilities loom higher. 

He rises, feeling undead. He pulls on a costume of wakefulness, and hopes it’s enough to fool himself. 

 

* * *

 

Stepping into the practice pitch feels like walking backwards through a dark room. The dome ceiling feels miles too low, and as Louis stretches he imagines the sky crashing down on him. 

The sag in his shoulders and greyish tint beneath his eyes elicit catcalls from a few teammates, and the mark on his neck is hardly inconspicuous. 

 

Each subtle movement is his body berating his decisions. There’s a hollow ache in his chest cavity, some shameful air sac to match his feeble bones, and all he wants is to fly away. 

He plays averagely. It’s easy to hide behind the skills of the other players while his body adjusts, gaining momentum. Adrenaline serves as a good distraction, and eventually he finds his footing again. 

 

* * *

 

His apartment welcomes him home with open arms and an empty bathtub. He eases himself into the water, near-boiling, testing to see if he can make it silent and unflinching. Submerged, he lets his lungs deflate, feeling like a crustacean. 

Run hard and lean, exhaustion setting in to his body, he rewards himself with some murky, mind-wandering fantasy. Something whimsical and derailed, his limbs buttered and devoured, revered as some delicacy, almost too hot to touch, and greasy, dripping...

 

There’s a face to give the figure his mind projects this time, angles and expressions that don’t ask to be invented welling up and spilling over. Beneath the water, his fingers trace the bruises like braille along his thigh. Vacantly, before the flashbulbs burst, Louis wonders if they’re spelling out a name.


	9. Chapter 9

A steadily growing number of canvases sit against the back wall of the studio, overlapping in a variety of sizes. There’s also a glint in Liam’s eye that Louis hasn’t seen before. It seems off kilter and out of place above the well mannered smile, pleasantly terrifying. Barely through the studio’s door and Louis’ gut is pulling back in apprehension. 

His first thought, not quite panic but a cold knife of paranoia, is that Liam knows, knows that he took Harry home out of pure drunken lust and convenience, knows that Harry left without a word, and surely knows how the hangover and distraction of it all wrapped around his limbs and hindered any and all ability to function. 

His second thought is a distinct confusion as to why any of it would matter. When Liam extends an arm to steer him in the right direction, he finds himself leaning into the touch, complying eagerly, as if desperately seeking approval. He’s a bit sickened with himself, but not surprised.

“Let’s get you seated over here,” Liam says, prodding him towards Zayn and the easel. “Zayn wants to get some facial detailing done today.” 

 

Louis sits readily at the chair Liam has produced, scooting him closer to Zayn’s table of instruments. The chair has war wounds - paint flecks raining heavily on the seat of the orange plastic, and scuffed, beaten metal legs. 

Inched in, close enough to Zayn for their feet to brush if either of them extended only slightly, Louis risks a peak at the table. The bent wire brushes and lethally sharpened charcoal pencils remind him of torture devices, dental tools.

“I thought that’s what the pictures you took the other day were for...?” It’s a hesitant question, more an thick-skulled thought than anything else. As willing as he is to comply, sitting straight postured and poised like a jointed doll, it’s glaringly obvious to everyone involved he doesn’t know the first thing about art. 

“I’m just old fashioned like that...” there’s a faint smile plodding along beside Zayn’s quiet words. Louis wants to scream, wants to tear frustrated shapes into the calm exterior. Helpless irritation digs under Louis’ skin as he sits silently, molded into something to appease this artist perched up on his stool. 

“I like to have the real thing in front of me. Better to really capture personality...”

Zayn busies himself with minute details, eyes caught in a ritual dance between segments of Louis’ face, plastered over his skull and written carefully over paper. Louis watches him, his positioning giving him the opportunity to stare directly, and he feels his vision cracking at the edges as he does, transfixed.

There’s nothing old fashioned about him. Every piece has been carefully constructed to entice, entrap. Some new aged demon that feeds on the confusion and worship of the little flies blind enough and dim enough to ensnare themselves between his slender fingers. 

 

The paranoia ebbs back in, even under the dizzying, disorienting spell Zayn’s casting over him. Distant alarm in the back of Louis’ head, screaming at him that Zayn’s doing more than cataloguing his expression, that he’s seeing more than just features, he’s seeing inside Louis’ head, some twisted black mind reader, stealing his thoughts and flipping through his memories and shame with a saliva drenched thumb. 

He feels foolish as he tries to monitor his thinking, breathe easy, as not to let the weird and rampant thoughts overflow and stretch their way across his face. Fully clothed for once, but feeling just as on display with Zayn’s eyes reading, analyzing him. On occasion their eyes meet, blue and wildly ruminating, golden brown and seemingly near-omniscient. 

Louis gets caught up in the still-bodied and fleeting exchange. Time seems to blur and lapse, harder to determine with his body in a simple resting pose. 

 

After what could be fifteen minutes or thirty, forty, Liam sneaks around the back of the easel, camera held lazily in his hands. He stretches out his arms, draping his upper body over Zayn’s shoulders. From Louis’ position it looks sensual, and well practiced. Zayn doesn’t flinch. 

The camera flashes twice, and spots leap before Louis’ eyes as Liam makes a satisfied and throaty sound. 

“That’s a good shot,” he says, face open and pleased as his voice. Zayn makes a sound, disinterested and noncommittal, and Liam shakes his head, detaching their bodies and winding back around towards Louis.

“What do you think?” His tone is playfully challenging now, banter between Zayn and himself that Louis is suddenly caught between. Louis searches Zayn’s face for some kind of clue to guide his reaction. He finds nothing, just dark eyes locked on a page tilted away from him. 

Liam is behind him now, and his arms come around on either side of Louis, holding the camera out in front of his chest. Louis looks down at the camera’s display screen, Liam’s breath a warm distraction by his ear. 

 

It is a good shot. Almost from the artist’s point of view, but held up, and to the side slightly, it shows Louis’s face, statuesque and eyes pointed to Zayn, and then replicated, duel and still being created by Zayn’s apparatuses; flesh and wire and graphite. 

There’s an almost invisible seam where the page of Zayn’s sketchbook blends in with the white of Louis’ shirt, creating the illusion of some two-headed totem pole, one skin and skull, and the other paper and bright pigments. Zayn’s hands seem to be reaching out from the camera screen, godlike as they breathe life into the drawing, perhaps peeling it from Louis’ face as they do.

 

It’s a professional, artistic photo, and Louis tells Liam such.

“See, _someone’s_ impressed with me...” A domesticated tease sits heavily in Liam’s words. Zayn’s reaction, a diminutive scoff, vanishes as soon as it appears. He continues sketching, looking less and less at Louis as he buries himself in his work. The air of captivation seems to have dwindled too, and Liam continues talking in an upbeat, guileless tone.

“How have practices been going?” Louis moves his eyes to follow Liam’s words, flicking back towards Zayn to try to determine just how much he’s allowed to move.

“Pretty well,” he answers, tipping his head incrementally to the side. “Definitely keeping me busy.”  
“Not to mention in shape,” Liam adds, dropping his camera to his side and giving Louis’ chest a poke. The teasing note is back in his voice, but not quite as light, not quite as playful. Louis dips his chin down in response, carefully watching for a reaction from Zayn. There isn’t one.

“I was wondering if I’d be able to come see you train sometime,” Liam goes on, wrapping the strap of his camera around his fingers. It’s an unconscious movement trickily disguised as a nervous habit. From his seated position, Louis has to look up at him, head at a sideways angle.

“I’d like to get some shots of you in action, if that’d be alright.” Louis finds himself nodding in a basic way before the words actually sink in.

 

“I’d have to check to see if you’d be allowed to film in the complex...and I don’t know if the rest of the team would want to be recorded?” Liam’s nodding in understanding, waving a hand dismissively.  
“Of course, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be at that set location. Even if it was just you on your own, just some footage of the way you move in your sport,” Liam’s voice is back to business again, not laced with demand precisely, but more of a cool expectation. Louis nods again, going over in his head how he can arrange something.

There’s a flourish, and Zayn is flipping his sketchbook closed, setting it on the table. 

“Sure you’re not just using his team to sell your movie?” Zayn’s words have a puckish bite to them.  
“Sports fans aren’t exactly the target audience,” Liam says dryly, giving Zayn a look. 

“Thanks for coming in today, Louis,” Zayn says, ignoring the way Liam is brandishing his camera at him. Louis blinks, looking between the two.  
“That’s all you needed?”  
“Yeah, the scheduling is getting tight with a few of the others, so we’ve got a lot of back-to-back sessions today,” Zayn replies, walking to the back of the room to pull up a canvas from the collection. 

He settles on one half-finished, all outline and sparse detail, matte colour filling in areas like finger painting.

 

Louis recognizes the figure, tall and thick, existing only in bold lines. The eyes are hollow and unfilled, patiently waiting for a shade of washed out, foggy green.

There’s no surprise when the door opens, and Harry steps inside. He doesn’t seem shaken to see Louis, but something shimmers through his stony expression. Louis tells himself he simply wasn’t expecting to see him there, not that he was hoping he wouldn’t be. The cool weather outside has been threatening permanence, and today Harry has a large olive green sweater pulled over his leotard. 

Harry looks at him, his face a contradiction of sharp edges and soft lines. Louis wants to smile, say hello, but instead he chews the inside of his lip, eyes wide and nervous.  
The sudden shuddering twitch of anxiety confuses him. Inside, deeper, another part is smug, gloating, eyes passing over Harry’s body in a slow scan, debaucherous and well-sated. 

"Fine pair, the two of you," there's something dark and edgy to Liam's chuckle, some ill-tempered joke that Louis isn't sure he's in on. He stays silent, deciphering, bouncing between jealousy and punchlines. There's hostility, some underground snap that he's not sure is directed at him.  
Liam snakes out of the room without clearing anything up, and beside Louis, Harry takes on a rigid and stiff-shouldered stance. 

 

Louis doesn't know about _'fine.'_ It tastes expired to him, thick and sour as his head wraps around it, tentacled and thirsty. _'Pair'_ in itself is a joke, as Harry seems to be greatly interested in cataloging every detail of the room with his eyes but Louis. Even their bodies scream for segregation, Louis a left-footed mess, stumbling over his larvae words, too deformed and malnourished to evolve and ever leave his tongue, and a towering muscle of immobility, frozen, locked in place.

A mumbler and a taxidermic tiger. But badly taxidermied. Even as Louis stammered and stuttered and tripped over his words, there was no fear, no apprehension of the marbled stare. Behind the rolling pelt and feral reputation, he knew the snarl had only been glued on, fake, and the claws were carved of styrofoam. 

 

A glance towards Zayn shows him busy, clearing up and organizing the supplies he had used on Louis, and settling up a much more elaborate display for Harry - small glass jars of ink, and circular brick-like pods of paint, the edges chipped. 

“Good to see you,” Louis tries, scanning Harry’s face for some kind of reaction. He stands tense beside him, tipping up the bare edges of his lips. It’s not a smile, it’s barely a motion at all. 

“Were you as hungover as I was?” His second attempt sounds so fake and hollow in his own ears he feels deafened by the time the words fall from his mouth.

“I reckon more so,” Harry answers, a flat obligation with undertones of excuse. Louis clings to it nonetheless.  
“I highly doubt that,” he tries to counter lightly, and not turn things into a challenge.  
“I had a lesson scheduled at seven,” Harry says back evenly. Louis winces, hoping it comes off as sympathetic.

“That must keep you pretty busy... Do you have things planned for most days?” He’s aiming for nonchalance, but it feels like prying, an obvious intention lying just beneath the surface.  
“Yes.” Harry doesn’t bother elaborating, but spares Louis a glance. 

“Any big upcoming plans?” Harry merely shrugs in response. 

“Have you gone mute?” Louis drops the attempt at small talk. It cascades to the floor, withers and dies. Harry eyes him, hard and flat and encompassing. 

“No.” Louis doesn’t know if he should laugh or glare, just as unsure as to which Harry is trying to goad out of him. 

“Right...okay...” he trails off, searching for a way to word his thoughts that won’t come out as desperate. “If you’ve got another day off sometime - ”

“Most people tend to have those,” Harry says, dry and mocking. Louis narrows his eyes, watching Harry raise his eyebrows insignificantly, expectantly.

"Can we have one conversation that doesn't devolve into you being an arsehole?" Louis snaps at him, feeling a heated rush begin to boil in his head.

“You always ask people to hit you when you’re drunk?” Harry levels back, and Louis sends a panicked glance in Zayn’s direction, but his voice is low, with enough distance between them and the artist. Louis still eyes him warily, before hissing out a response.

“Don’t try to shame me. You seem pretty well rehearsed in sneaking out before the sun rises.” Harry doesn’t answer, just stands there fixing him with a bored stare. Louis huffs, trying to even out his breathing, feeling his heart beat hot and angry in his chest.

“Christsake, I was _going_ to ask - ”  
“I know what you were going to ask,” Harry cuts him off, voice low and level. The hard look hasn’t left his eyes, but it seems less temperamental. “And I’m busy.” Louis laughs at this, a dry and snapping sound, like sticks and bones and fallen leaves.

“If you’re not interested just say so, you don’t have to be a prick about it,” he mutters. The door behind him seems to beckon.

“I’m just busy,” Harry says just as Louis is turning to leave. It’s a not a dismissive comment, not apologetic, but less than his initial obligatory answers. Louis turns back, facing sideways to catch Harry’s eyes leap up to meet his from where they were trailing down his body.

“Well if you’re ever not busy...” Louis goes to pull his phone from the pocket of his jeans, moving slowly, like Harry is some animal prone to spooking, or charging. Harry beats him to it, smoothly dipping a hand into his sweater pocket, unlocking and handing over his own phone.

Louis casts one last glance over to Zayn. The tabletop is set up compulsively, paints arranged in lines by colour and a handful of brushes by size. Zayn himself seems to be quietly absorbed in blotching the edges of his canvas with a damped sponge, lost in his work again.

 

Louis plugs his number into Harry’s phone, briefly debating saving it under some silly name, but casting the thought away. 

The coldly focused stare Harry is holding him under is magnetic, and hard to break away from. Louis hands his phone back.

 

“So I guess I’ll see you around.” It’s not supposed to come out sounding so much like a question. Harry nods. It looks uncannily like one of his shrugs, blunt and seemingly uncaring. 

Louis feels like he’s been brushed off, so he leaves, head still whirling from the quick-paced mood swings of their conversation, wild and overpowering like ocean currents.


	10. Chapter 10

Asking the team and management about someone coming to film a practice doesn’t go over as smoothly as Louis had hoped it would. Instantly questions come flying at him about the nature of the visit, and then the nature of the documentary when he tries to explain. 

He leaves out choice details, notedly names and his own barebacked involvement, struggling to find an explanation that seems believably professional. Hearing himself say it out loud, it seems suspicious and absurd.   
He writes it off to a bad crossover of art and athletics. 

Thankfully, the managerial team then pipes up with some long winded speech about confidentiality of players, and unlicensed solicitors, and more rulebook regulations that Louis barely understands, nor cares to know more about. 

 

Liam works it out to come by anyway, singling Louis out to get some footage of his laps and individual work outs before staying to watch the practice match. 

It’s a judgmental feel, having a camera fixed on him while he runs drills, slightly apart from the rest of the team. Liam uses a wide lens, zooming in to focus on the motion of Louis’ legs as he stretches, holds postures, repeats on the opposite side. 

It’s worse when the camera is set aside, and the team huddles up around the coach, talking them through the plays for the rehearsal match. They’re divided up as usual, bright yellow flags pinned to half. 

If Louis was pressed, he’d say that the team practices were a bigger challenge that the real games - all shirts the same colour, all faces familiar and ingrained as his side. Suddenly pitted against him, and a new selection each time, more effort is required, put into recognizing who’s who, what members are safe to pass to. 

And that effort now combined with Liam, standing on the sidelines, the added pressure of knowing he’s there. With the real matches, crowds blend into a blur, too many faces to really register as being _people,_ and as Louis runs they all fade into noise makers, adrenaline suppliers.

 

Now, taking his position on the field, the weight of Liam’s presence threatens to cripple him. It’s a conscious effort to pretend he’s not there, pretend he’s just another coach, some anonymous spectator. By the end of the match, he’s dripping and winded, that spark of performance adding a lightness to his steps, exhausted from striving to impress. 

They leave together, after Louis’ showered quickly, lathering himself up and rinsing down hurriedly, trying to avoid the comments and questions of his teammates. A few side-eye, curiously or critically as they walk out, but Liam seems unfazed.

 

Liam drives him to the studio, filling the car with an animated commentary of Louis’ match, and the footage he accumulated. Louis sits quietly, still coming down from the hard-paced practice, and listens to Liam talk.

They pull into a faculty reserved parking space outside of the building, and Liam drops Louis a wink as they exit the car. 

 

Inside, Liam motions for Louis to follow him as he’s about to climb the second stairwell.   
Liam leads him into a room near the end of the hall that Louis suspects is right about above the auditorium. The room is minimalist, just a chair and desk with a computer, and a bookshelf, shelves filled with a collection of black binders, magazines and books on cameras and photography. 

 

“This is where I’ve been stringing together the documentary,” Liam explains, placing his camera on the desk and plugging a cord into the side of the computer. He loads it up, swiveling the chair to face Louis, inviting him to sit. He does, and Liam bunches up to his side, typing in his password and selecting an application along the side of the screen. His desktop is generic, some stock photo of a forest. 

“Thought you might want to see some of what I’ve got so far,” Liam says, straightening Louis’ chair with a nudge of his knee. “Since you’ve been by far our best participant,” he adds with a smile.   
Louis inches in towards the desk, a little bit pleased. 

Liam skips through sections he deems unready, skimming through a few lapses of Zayn painting, models stationary and statuesque in the background. He plays one scene of a girl - the ballerina Louis encountered - pirouetting, thin and perfect, and watches her fade into a shot of Zayn painting the edge of her skirt, the motion of his hands mimicking the soft twirls of her dancing. 

Another scene shows Zayn twisting the cap off a tube of paint as a model - a long legged and polished-bodied man Louis hasn’t seen before - pulls off his shirt. 

And another has Louis - he recognizes it as his second session - lit up golden by the sun, the camera’s exposure erasing the view from the window and turning it into a blank white sheet, blinding. The shot changes skillfully, so subtle that it takes Louis a moment to realize he’s now looking down into Zayn’s sketchbook, the white of the window turned into the white of the page, but Louis’ body the same, spread across the sill. 

 

It’s filled with mirrored shots and smooth transitions, much more artistic than Louis was expecting, and Liam frowns at him when he voices this.

“Well of course... I couldn’t strip all the creativity out of a project focused on artists. And I _do_ have a bit of my own...” Louis scrambles to reword himself, erase the shock and doubt from his tone, and Liam laughs, a hand pressing down on his shoulder. 

“It looks really good,” Louis says, watching a lapse of Zayn adding detail to a piece. It’s odd, seeing a face come out of so many small lines and presses of ink to canvas.

“Thanks. Still needs a lot of work.” Liam smooths out the fabric of Louis’ shirt across his back and shoulders. “We’d better get you upstairs. We’re quite a bit late for your session, and Zayn tends to get moody if he’s kept waiting.” Louis rises from the chair, the wheels clacking against the tiled floor. As he stands, he notes how dark it’s gotten outside, and how fast the evenings seem to be coming.

 

“Sorry we’re late...my fault, held Louis up in my office for a while,” Liam says as the enter the upstairs studio. Zayn doesn’t even glance over at them from where he’s sat on his stool, hands coated with pale grey and purple paint smudges, eyes boring holes in his canvas. In front of him, just off to the side, Harry is sprawled out on the floor. 

He twists up and around upon their entrance, ignoring Zayn’s aggravated sigh to stare at them, dark and stormy-eyed.

“You’re still here,” Louis observes. Liam drapes an arm loosely around his shoulders, herding him into the room. 

“Brought Harry up to fill the time when you didn’t show up,” Zayn replies testily, eyes not leaving his work. Liam raises his eyebrows at Louis, pulling a sour face. 

“Do you still want me to pose today?” Louis asks, shrinking slightly. Liam squeezes his shoulder reassuringly.  
“Of course, don’t mind him,” he says, nudging him forwards. 

Harry gets up from the floor, only wearing his pale leggings, and Louis doesn’t know where to look. The dancer strides towards them - and the door, and Louis squirms conspicuously out from under Liam’s arm. 

“Free Sunday,” Harry murmurs as he passes them, dark and breezily, the electric air before a storm.

Louis doesn’t have the chance to answer before Harry leaves, pulling the door shut behind him, and Liam’s hands come to his side, urging him into the room.

 

With Zayn’s direction, Liam pokes and prods him into position, a wide legged stance, arms locked together above his head, hand to elbow. 

 

As the blood drains from his arms, he thinks about Sunday. He has a practice the next afternoon.   
He’ll manage. 

 

* * *

 

By the time the weekend arrives, Louis’ run down from practices, exhaustion invaded his head, making him feel young and short-tempered.

He texts Harry his address in the evening, receiving a reply later on, a curt confirmation. He’s grateful to add the name and number to his contacts, saved from the embarrassment of having to eventually ask for a surname. 

He busies himself with washing the tower of dishes in the sink, and the grass stains from his knees. His bedroom is in its constant state of disarray, and he shovels the piles of clothes into his closet, kicking a few strays beneath his bed. 

He takes the garbage out, then showers again, thoroughly, taking his time. 

 

Harry arrives as the sun is dipping down beneath the horizon, and he pulls the door shut behind him.

 

There’s an awkward patch as Louis asks about his lessons. He’s been edging closer to where Harry is still standing almost in the doorway, and after a few short-worded answers, tilts his head up, a shy suggestion. 

Harry accepts it, kisses him, dipping his chin down, and Louis stretches up on his toes to get a better angle.

 

Louis’ hands creep their way inside Harry’s jacket, pulling it down off his shoulders, and it falls to the floor. Harry moves his hands to Louis’ waist, nearly spanning the full way around, and Louis hums quietly, feeling Harry’s tongue, slow and wet, slide into his mouth. 

 

Louis backs them up, gets them as far as the living room and sits down heavily on the couch, pulling at the hem of Harry’s shirt until he does the same. 

 

They kiss, tongues sliding and twisting like sea creatures. Louis pushes and presses against the iron grip around his hips, Harry’s mouth moving too languidly. Finally, Louis wriggles halfway onto his lap, careless with impatience.

“You can get rough with me...” Louis says against his lips, pushing up against Harry’s hands. Harry hesitates, kissing him back slowly, before pulling away.

“If you want that we have to talk first,” he says, straightening.   
“I don’t want to _talk,”_ Louis whines, the line blurring between arousal and annoyance.  
“We’re not doing that without some rules,” Harry’s voice is back to being hard-edged and stony.   
_“Rules,_ honestly!” Louis says, exasperated and dropping back against the arm of the couch. His jeans are tight and uncomfortable, zipper digging into him as he squirms to find relief. 

“It’s not some game you can just frivolously start up with everyone you meet,” Harry says, irritation clipping his words short. “You have to put things in order. It’s not safe, otherwise.”  
“I didn’t invite you here to lecture me. I’m not stupid, Harry, I know what I want,” Louis snaps, feeling clouded, defensive and thick-headed.

“You’ve hardly been acting like you’re experienced,” Harry replies, voice lethal once again, and Louis recoils on the couch, offended.   
“As if one drunk night makes you an expert on my level of experience,” he seethes, standing up abruptly and pacing to the kitchen. 

He pours a glass of wine for himself, kicking his _‘no drinks on practice nights’_ policy to the curb, and doesn’t offer any to Harry.

 

“Every previous encounter with you gave me a pretty good idea of your level of _maturity,”_ Harry says as he crosses the living room, shirt half undone and eyes pale. There’s a silence as Louis wills his heart to stop racing, and his fingers to stop the tremor they’ve picked up.

“Then why did you sleep with me.” He curses the way the words stumble out, as helpless and slime-coated as a newborn. He looks down at his glass, a sick pale yellow held by almost trembling hands.

“I was drunk.” Louis bites his lip at Harry’s blunt answer, looking up to find him staring back, square and unaffected.  
“Don’t just say that...”  
“You were _there.”_ And Louis flinches, horrified at the feeling of tears spiking up behind his eyes. He refuses to let them fall, and folds his arms across his chest. Hip jutted to one side, tense and watchful as Harry crosses into the kitchen, stride even and self assured. Louis feels juvenile, and not quite fully formed beside him. 

“If I was just some drunken shag then why did you come over?” Louis says, voice dipping quieter as he tries to regain some kind of strength. “I thought we were both on the same page with...” he ends ambiguously and swirls the liquid in his glass, takes another drink.  
“We would be if you would stop being childish and take responsibility,” Harry replies smoothly, walking to the door and picking his jacket up from the floor. He slides his arms into the sleeves, but doesn’t button it. 

 

“Rules, then,” Louis says after a strained silence. He looks up to see Harry watching him, jaw clenched and hands idle. 

“Safe word. The second you don’t respond to something I ask you we’re stopping - “  
“I know the basics,” Louis interrupts dryly. Harry glowers from the door.

“I’m not looking for a relationship.”  
“Jesus, Harry, I’m not asking for that!”

“I’m not looking for some kind of dom/sub relationship,” Harry clarifies darkly. “We can mess around if you really know what you want and you can handle it - _maturely,”_ he inflects pointedly, “but I’m not taking care of you. And I don’t fuck with any of that breath-play shit.”

“Fine,” Louis says briskly, the arousal in him burnt and dying.   
“And communication, clarification, keep it clean, and call it off if anyone feels uncomfortable, _fuck,”_ he mutters under his breath. 

_“Fine._ If you know what you’re getting into,” Harry trails off with a shrug, shoulders stretched formidably beneath his jacket. 

“I do,” Louis replies. His tongue feels sharp and pointed, and he drops his arms to his sides. “I appreciate it,” he makes a gesture, a vague and bland movement to summarize the night.   
“You seem like you appreciate it,” Harry says, words wet with sarcasm.   
“Not exactly how I expected things to turn out, was it?” Louis spits, taking a drink and attempting to swallow his spite along with the wine. It works, to some degree. 

“No...” Harry concedes, seeming to lose some of his brick-wall resolve.

“Well.” Louis doesn’t know what else to say, with Harry’s hand itching to grasp the doorknob. “Text me next time you’re free...” he trails off, letting it hang like a question. Harry nods once, leaves.

Louis falls asleep restless and unsated, and with dreams to match.


	11. Chapter 11

When he arrives at the complex his head is screaming up a riot, raw-throated and colicky. 

As they set up for drills, his team seems to be giving him a wide berth, and Louis wonders if his skin is emanating steam. 

 

There’s a fury burning deep and low inside him, and his pace accelerates, passing and outshining teammates usually a good half-lap ahead of him. A hot sear sets up in his legs, harnessing his calves, and he lets it, uses it.

 

It seems surreal, too easy to grapple the ball away from the advancing forwards. A burst of paranoia explodes in his head, and he’s close to snapping, asking if they’re even trying, bashing skulls and starting fights. 

On top of it all, he knows he’s playing recklessly, knows he’s wont to tear something, or collide too aggressively with another player. The rational part of his brain has been silenced, and he finds himself wanting to crash, wanting to rile others up until they’re boiled and burning and on his level. 

 

He stands restless under the spray in the showers, hot enough to hurt, but not enough to be of any use. 

He dresses, hails a cab. 

 

At home, his cellphone holds a missed call at arm’s length, like it’s dirty and dangerous. 

 

* * *

 

It’s late when Harry lets himself in, the sky dark, and Louis’ skin is itching. 

 

They make it to the bedroom this time, Louis spread out on the sheets, feeling like an addict, shaking as his body demands more.

More than the apathy Harry presses to his lips, more than the flat focus of his tongue, and he wants to ask him if he’s bored, if he’d rather be somewhere else, with someone else, _something,_ when Harry licks into his mouth, electric hot and slippery, hands pushing down the weight of all the steel muscle held rippling over his body, trembling.

 

It’s tame, doesn’t take Louis to where he wants to go, but it comes close, it’s enough. All the clatter in his brain backs down, a hushed murmuring audience to the symphony his nerves perform.

 

He doesn’t quite feel far away by the time Harry slows above him, grip going lax at his waist and shoulder. Not quite the right space in his head, pastel and pliant, but there is a distance, a separation from the rest of the world.

Harry pets his head, fingers hot and damp as they pass down the side of his face. It’s a comfort, a settling, the soothing of a quick heartbeat.

 

It’s not far away, but away enough for thoughts to come on slower, and he slips into sleep, unable to work out if Harry is a part of the distance, or part of the world he’s distancing from.

 

Harry lets himself out while Louis’ sleeping, infantile and tranquilized.

 

* * *

 

Louis wakes alone, runs the shower cold. It freezes the scream in his lungs.

His apartment feels too big when he gets out.


	12. Chapter 12

Zayn and Liam take their time in arranging Louis into the same position he had posed before, laying back against the wooden chest, legs spread facing the artist’s table. Louis moves agreeably, dropping his shoulders under the pressure from Liam’s hands, and draping his ankles over the edge when Zayn scratches at them with his fingers.

When they finally deem his posture satisfactory, there’s a flush waiting just beneath his skin, waiting to be dug out and revealed. 

Louis wonders if the colour will make it onto Zayn’s palette. 

 

His body is caught in a quiet ache by the time Liam’s face reappears from behind the lens, and Zayn’s brushes finally still. The feeling has long since evacuated his toes, and as he stands up to pull on his clothes, he knows there’s a pattern of the wooden edge engrained into the backs of his thighs. 

 

“Here, why don’t you come tell me what you think.” Zayn is beckoning him over with smudged fingers. Louis wrestles his shirt back over his head and walks over to slip behind the small table, standing beside the artist. Propped up on the easel is a scratched and murky version of himself, his body harshly underlined in charcoal, details fine and bright with ink, skin filled in with layers of paint.

“This is incredible,” Louis says, awe reaching his voice, and he’s tempted to stretch out his hand to touch, feel the texture, and see if his own nerves respond in turn. Zayn’s laugh is a quiet presence beside him.

“It still needs work,” he says modestly, and from a distance away, Liam scoffs.

“Zayn’s one of those artists who’s never satisfied with his pieces,” he says. There’s something in his tone and expression that Louis doesn’t quiet understand. Irritation, there in the tight fold of his arms, the sideways tilt of his head, and narrowed eyes.

Zayn doesn’t deny it, but flips open his sketchbook, nudging Louis softly in the side. He looks down to see a page of scattered floral designs, twisting combinations of roses and orchids, with the same aggressive charcoal outlines as on the canvas.  
“I was thinking of fitting these in, a bit of layered edge, washing it out a bit...” Louis hums, leaning in to get a better look as Liam crosses the room, and glances down with feigned disinterest.

“Disturbingly yonic,” he comments, before turning back to leave the room. Louis sends Zayn a curiously confused look, and the artist merely shrugs, smiling.

 

“Anyway, I think after this session I’m done with your body in the piece,” Zayn continues, looking thoughtfully at his own work. “Still have to pick a shade for the background. I was thinking of something pale. Yellow, maybe.” Louis pulls a face, some mongrel hybrid of a grimace an a pout.  
“I look terrible in yellow.” Zayn has angled his narrow body towards him, and pulls a dry brush from the table, spinning it lightly between his fingers.

“There’s a difference between looking good in a colour, and a colour looking good on you.” He presses the brush to the soft angle of Louis’ cheekbone. “It’s not subtle.”

There’s a clatter from the other side of the room; the door smacking open against the wall.

Harry is stalking towards them from across the room, Liam standing in an arrogant pose against the doorframe. 

 

Zayn’s energy shifts as the newcomer stops stiffly on the opposite side of the table.  
“Harry...good to see you,” he says, voice clipped and suggesting otherwise. He flashes a look towards Liam in the doorway, who’s innocently inspecting his fingernails. It looks staged, theatrical. Louis almost wants to laugh, but some key element to the punchline is lost on him.

As Louis is watching Harry move towards him - towards Zayn, really, as he’s barely taken the time to glance at Louis - the painting of himself has been taken down, and replaced with the figure of the thin blonde ballet dancer. 

The number of canvases to choose from, propped against the back wall has Louis questioning out loud how many paintings Zayn’s been working on.

“Hoping to have maybe twenty by the time it’s all finished? I’ve only got two pieces with Taylor to be featured, though,” he gestures to the canvased dancer, “and I don’t think I’ll get around to finishing the second one,” Zayn says, dropping his brush back onto the table. 

“Why’s that?” Louis asks, looking at the painting. The skirt swirling around her waist looks gauzy and sheer.  
“She pulled out of the project,” Zayn answers, smudging a line of charcoal with his thumb and drawing out a shadow. 

“Did she,” Harry’s voice, a deadweight in the quiet room.  
“Mm,” Zayn says noncommittally. “Too busy, I guess.” There’s something in Harry’s expression, some reaction he’s playing down that Louis wants to press, like he knows some tender piece of gossip. Instead, he finds himself being drawn back into Zayn’s eyes as the artist turns to him.

“You like it?” There’s nothing in his voice that suggests he’s expecting praise, just quiet contemplation.  
“Yeah...” Louis lets his eyes flit over the canvas. “Is this one finished?”  
“I was going to go over the top layer a bit more,” Zayn says with a vague shrug. “Even out the texture.”  
“Think it looks good like that,” Louis says. “Looks raw.” He finds himself nodding his head along as he talks.

“I don’t want it to be _too_ raw,” Zayn says, giving him a glance. “She looks polished - her movements, her body,” he waves a hand dismissively. “Can’t look too rough.”  
“I like it rough,” Louis says, keeping his tone light and eyes fixed on the painting.  
“Well it’s not going to end up looking laminated,” Zayn says, smiling a crooked smile as he begins packing up brushes. Some still wet with dirtied water, he wipes his hands on his shirt carelessly.

Louis’ eyes find Harry, taking in his tensely squared shoulders and fixed gaze before dripping back to the painting.


	13. Chapter 13

Between practices where he runs his feet raw, and falling asleep alone, Louis messages Harry. It’s tentative at first, but finally he skips to the point, nervously chewing on his thumbnail, typing out a one handed text.

_I want to take things further next time._

He gnaws at himself, almost to the point of drawing blood as he words and rewords it, trying it as a question, before it finally gets sent. 

 

Days pass, and his behaviour on the pitch gets more and more violent, reckless. The next time he finds himself walking into the art studio, his head is stuffed full of insects, crowded and buzzing. 

 

* * *

 

He poses, holds himself in silence, but the shake and strain isn’t enough, even along with Liam’s praise. Even Zayn’s snippy directions slide off his skin, feeling oily and ruffled. 

After, at home, he finds a response, pick a word, followed by a day, and a question mark. He agrees immediately, checking his calendar afterwords. 

He writes it off as a miracle when he finds himself unscheduled the next day.

 

* * *

 

There’s a smirk on Harry’s face when he steps inside to see Louis standing there waiting with his hands clasped in front of him, wearing pants and nothing else.

“Eager,” Harry says in place of a greeting, and Louis shrugs. It’s tense, too sharp and too high, and he doesn’t bother playing it off as otherwise.  
“Not here to talk this time, then,” Harry continues, eyes spreading out over Louis’ body until he feels covered and contaminated. He shivers, blaming it partly on the breath of cold air that snuck through the door.

“Not here to talk,” Louis repeats a confirmation, twitching the muscles in his legs as he watches Harry slide off his shoes, undo his coat. He folds it, torturously slow and Louis wants to shout. 

“Lead the way then,” Harry says after a lifetime, and Louis turns, practically running to his bedroom. He finally turns back once he’s there, and Harry kisses him, bracing his arms on either side of Louis’ body, kicking his legs out from under him when he runs a tongue wetly over Louis’ bottom lip. Harry sucks the gasp from his lungs as he catches him, hands huge and spanning his back and waist as he lifts him up, carries him to the mattress. In the seconds before his back touches the duvet, Louis feels weightless. 

 

Harry’s delicate when he crawls up to tower above him, laying small and breathless on the bed. An inconsistency between body and behaviour, and Louis’ mind wildly sends him back to the art studio, watching a figure turn and float across a stage.

The image fades as Harry’s hand lands low on his stomach, pinning him in place, but even with the force, it’s not enough, Louis’ head is still mewling and rampant.

“I’m not made of glass,” Louis says, the weight on his abdomen compressing his words and drawing them out. “Harry, you’re not going to break me...”  
Teeth sink into the meat of his shoulder in response, a snarl spreading wetly out across the skin.  
“I want to break you,” his voice is as savage as it is polished. He drags his hand away from Louis’ stomach, tears his pants down, letting the seams scream pink lines down his legs, throws them to the floor.

 

A slow leak starts dripping in Louis’ brain, pressure beginning to circle down the drain. 

 

Harry’s hands creep roughly up again, one returning to sit fat and heavy on his abdomen, the other to drag between his thighs and settle in a fist grip around his cock, and Louis feels a swoop of air leave his lungs, tasting desperate and dribbling across his tongue. 

 

It’s so much after endless days of not enough, and the edge and drone in his head rears up again. He struggles against the weight Harry has on him, centered and crushing, and his limbs dance a useless flail against the blankets. 

The movement is a challenge, a confrontation and he knows it, expects it when Harry hisses a dark and deadly sound against his throat, teeth bared and venomous. Expects it when the weight comes flying off his stomach, and two hands lock around his hips, wrench him to the side and press him flat and facedown.

Louis wriggles as soon as he gets his head turned to the side, draws a fast breath in, and tries to get an arm under himself to adjust where his cock is hard and bending, crying out at the angle.

 

It’s too fussy, too jittery for Harry’s liking and he smacks down on the back of Louis’ thighs, ordering Louis to count through the sudden sting, facedown on the mattress. 

 

An iron grip at the base of his neck tightens when he messes up, skips a number or stammers, that harsh and stinging smack coming down at any sign of trembling, the smallest movement that Harry deems as disobedient. 

 

He’s halfway to a hundred, trying to time numbers to the beat of his heart, when Harry growls at him to go slower, each mistake a new slap, and starting over.

A breathless wail runs up and out from his throat on one thousand jellied legs when his voice breaks and he loses track, Harry’s voice lethal and unseen, _start again,_ and he’s back to the beginning. 

A fractured urge to be good enough bubbles up and boils over, scalding his eyes as they overflow hot and burning down his cheeks. 

And his counting changes, falling into a pattern of _one, I’m sorry - two, I’m sorry - fifteen, I’m sorry - forty, fifty…_

It doesn’t register when he’s flipped over, belly smeared and sticky, and he doesn’t let up, chest shaking with the effort of trying to breathe between numbers - every five if he remembers.

 

“Louis...” Through the haze beginning to cloud his eyes, Louis looks up, hearing something that sounds like awe in Harry’s voice, something that breaks through the monitored dullness that he’s always heard before.

 

“Look at you...you’re fire...” A hand comes reaching out to stroke the salt stains from Louis’ face. His skin flinches as he tries to push up into the touch.

“Then put me out,” Louis’ voice is broken, and he feels broken to match, turned into something small-bodied and delicate, suddenly made of glass and contradictions, transparent and vulnerable and held prisoner by Harry’s hands.

 

Hands that move to slip together with his own, clammy and trembling at his sides. Harry’s mouth is on his neck, barely moving, and the only word Louis’ mind can produce, stuttering is _please.. please…_

 

He’s still silently begging, tears tracing slow patterns down to bead and drop from his chin, when Harry licks wetly down his throat, his tongue a flat underline to his collarbone, lips and tongue pushing down, hands holding firmly, dragging Louis’ arms down to his sides.

 

Harry’s mouth soaks a trail down the gasping push of Louis’ body, settling around his cock, where he nips at the edge of his foreskin before sinking down.  
Louis’ yelp fades to a moan before it’s left his tongue, and weakly squeezes his fingers around Harry’s.

 

He comes quickly, embarrassingly fast, after Harry’s taken him down to the base only four times, tongue lapping around the head. He tries to choke out an apology but Harry disintegrates the sense from his lips as he points his tongue, and digs it into the slit of his cock.  
Louis screams, feeling hoarse and underwater as his spine leaps and juts away from the mattress. 

He gets a quick slap for the outburst, across his wrist where Harry’s dropped his hand, and a command, just as quick, to stay silent.

 

And Louis obeys, as best he can, until Harry’s fingers are dripping and slipping into him, chased by his tongue, and spreading him apart, sinking deeper, and a whimper falls from his mouth. He tries to gasp and breathe it back in, but Harry’s fingers are slowing, stopping, and Louis’ crying again, bleating out apologies and promises to be good, promises to be better. 

 

Harry shushes him, soothes him with a rough caress that spans the length of his torso, flushed pink, and alive with a pale tremble. 

“It’s okay, baby, hard to stay quiet, I know,” he breathes a gentle lullaby into Louis’ inner thigh, fingers sliding deeper again. “Doing so well...” There’s an unexpected jab and Louis bites back a second wail, digging his nails into the meat of his own stomach before Harry bats his hands away. 

 

Harry coaxes a second orgasm from him before drawing his fingers out, warm and slippery as they slither a trail up Louis’ side. 

 

Louis eyes are wet and unfocused when Harry pulls back away from him, off the bed, to pull his shirt over his head. He’s out of sight, and Louis whines, trying to sit up, but his body feels too heavy to move, arms and legs made out of cotton. 

 

“I’m not leaving,” Harry’s voice reaches him through the blur, honed, and sharp as glass, without the transparency. Louis’ body shivers, caves back down again. He listens as Harry undoes his belt, steps out of his jeans. There’s a flourish of fabric, and then warmth is blossoming out across his skin again, Harry’s body above his, hands spreading his legs apart. 

 

“Do you remember our word?” Harry’s kissing a violently slow line down Louis’ chest, fingers tweaking and scratching up a duet. Louis exhales a shaky mouthful of air, tongue fighting around letters, to say yes.

“Remember what we talked about?” Another yes, but it’s higher this time, dizzy, Harry’s mouth lower, hands rough.

“And you’re going to use that word if you want to stop, aren’t you?” Harry looks up at him, nipping his stomach once, twice before Louis gasps out another confirming yes.

Harry pulls back, rolls on a condom. There’s a pause, and silence, then Louis flinches lightly as Harry slides his fingers, cold and dripping, back inside him. 

“Roll over,” a low and grit-filled whisper, and Louis tries to obey as the fingers slip back out of him, moves his body like a gasping fish, sand in his gills as he splays, twists, crashes to the side. 

Harry’s hands steady him, one greasy wet and inching under his thigh, bending him open.

 

He pushes in slowly, and dimly, through the thrum, and Louis wonders why there’s no sting to it, no stretching burn to flinch or shy away from. But his thoughts just drift away, skyward and heaven bound, hands vexed and pawing at the sheets.

 

Harry tears another orgasm from him, still deep inside, and it’s jagged and narrow, a bolt of lighting under his skin screaming thinly to be let out, searing hot and sudden.  
Louis’ head feels fat, tongue thick and strangled as he cries out softly, twisting away and into the feel of it, limbs boneless and tossing. 

Even through the distance in his head, and the slowness of the world, his heart pounds, rapid and terrifying, and his breathing turns ragged, body sagging into and away from Harry’s with each slow thrust, into and away from. 

As the panic twists through his lungs, Harry’s hands are there, easing him onto his side, drawing his knees up, and curling around his body. He leans in to nip and lick and whisper into Louis’ ear, dropping his forehead down against his skull. Deep and heavy nonsense that Louis isn’t capable of interpreting, wild and frantic as he tries to compose himself, hold himself together, as Harry holds him, composing sonnets, love letters, and ballads in the filth and comfort he whispers into the soft hairs at the base of his neck.

Nothing holds together by the end of it, when Harry’s movements slow and drag to a stop, his whispers turn to soft breathing, and Louis’ in pieces.


	14. Chapter 14

He’s slow in waking when dawn reaches fingers past the clouds, squirms a loose-muscled stretch beneath the blankets, and something twinges. Not a pain but a presence, and his memory fills in as his eyes open. 

Harry’s there beside him, something almost soft in his expression as he watches Louis blink out his surprise.

 

“You’re still here...” there’s a morning rasp to his voice that turns his words harsh. He watches the interpretation cross Harry’s face, closing it off immediately. The bunch of his bicep foreshadows him getting off the bed, vanishing. Louis moves his hand, still sleep-slow and dulled, to rest gently, tentatively on the muscle. It stills.

“No, I didn’t mean...” the haze of waking hasn’t yet left his eyes, and he can’t hold Harry’s steady gaze. “I just meant...you stayed.” There’s a quiet lapse. “You haven’t stayed before.” Something sits like a sigh across Harry’s shoulders.

“Couldn’t just leave with you that far under,” his voice is pure gravel, rock and grit and dirt beneath fingernails, crushed velvet in the early light.

 

Something unsaid rests unmentioned between them on the mattress. Not touching, but bodies close enough to share warmth. Louis thinks it’s almost comfortable, and the thought moves uneasily through him, a paradox as Harry closes his eyes again.

“You could have...” Louis offers, voice timid, as if scared the other boy will bolt, turn tail and run. 

“It wouldn’t have been right,” Harry’s low murmur comes.

 

“Thanks.” It feels weirdly formal to say.

 

* * *

 

Louis wishes his playing wasn’t impacted, improved on the days after. Wishes the bounce and swing of his muscles was from training payoff, from his own skills polished and airbrushed into something bright and sparkling.  
He doesn’t bother pretending by the time he’s stopped the ball with a twist and rotate that elicits a cheer from both his teammates and the watching coaches. It’s a good feeling, but he wants it to come without a worrying sense of dependency flickering through his head.

 

And it’s easy to relax into a pose, finally feeling indifferent to a camera lens so close to his near-naked body. 

 

And afterwards, there’s no mania or suspicion when Zayn invites him over to look at the pieces he has finished, and displayed on white plastic easels against the back wall.

 

He skims over the first one of himself, background a pale stain of white wine, with flowers looking dried and twiggy, overlaying the muscle inside rough charcoal lines, thighs and abdomen looking like packaged meat.

 

Beside himself is Harry, done with finer lines but rougher strokes, and there’s a fierce sense of pride in it. From where he stands, Louis is unable to decipher whose pride he’s staring at. 

The artist’s maybe, as each streak and curve and pigment is shrieking out at him, violent in its muted hues, demanding to be seen, commanding to be praised. 

Or the dancer’s...so sure in the way his body stands, bold-lined and intensely aware of how it fills the room, occupies the canvas, entire and complete, eyes vacant and such a part of this muscled, canvased thing captured, frozen in breath.

Not vacant, Louis decides. Vast and etched but somehow unoccupied, cast skywards and searching, _searching,_ and the violence swims and alters into something like a plea, arms outstretched, one above and one reaching behind. Reaching, fingers both something feathered and clawed, reaching _up, up, out._

 

Louis edges along the wall, walking past the mounted sea glass gradients. 

 

Another piece, and Harry’s head is tilted back completely. It’s all jutting angles of jaw, straining lines of neck popping out, all vein and cord and aggression. There’s the forward burl of his chest, the swooping oval cutting down to his abdomen, shoulders drawn back, arms out. He seems to be made of sinew and raw meat. Louis stares, wondering if Zayn had requested he remove his skin along with his clothes. 

He’s surprised the image isn’t winged. That plumage hasn’t already begun seeping from his pores, some vibrant colour, dark in brilliance.

Yet looking at the piece, this textured and captured glimpse of something so powerful, Louis still can’t shake the idea of frailty. He writes it off as being a projection, maybe.

 

The fourth is the ballerina, the piece he’s seen before, now finished, pressed and prim and laced with lavender. He feels like he’s filled with dirty water staring at it, wondering how Zayn’s fingers, always so smudged and blackened, ever placed such untainted purity onto the surface.

_Godlike,_ he finds himself thinking again.


	15. Chapter 15

Harry’s tired as he steps inside the apartment. Louis reads it in the low, heavy swing of his arms, the curve of his shoulders where they usually move in a rigid line. 

 

They make it to the bedroom, quick and dirty, Louis pushing at him, clamoring on top once their clothes have pooled to the floor, pouring half a bottle of lube, slick and slimy down Harry’s front, who growls crankily at the seeping mess.  
_“Why_ have you done that,” he gripes, snapping at Louis’s hands as they try to land on his shoulders.

Louis ignores the toothy complaint, tries to ignore the pinch at his hips, and grinds down on the slippery mess coating Harry’s groin, movements as sloppy as his skin, urging Harry to hardness and rubbing their cocks together, sitting down heavily on Harry’s thighs. 

 

Harry’s hands have dropped like rocks to his sides, body unmoving as Louis twists and writhes above him. He lays back for a while, closing his eyes as Louis dips his head and shimmies back to suck a nipple into his mouth, nipping and teasing at him. Below, he wraps a hand around Harry’s cock, twisting and flicking his wrist, fingers spattering liquid over both of their stomachs.

 

After a minute of Harry lying motionless, he stops, whining, and swatting at his chest. Harry’s eyes open at once, narrowed and bloodshot. 

There’s almost enough time for a breath before Harry’s sitting up, flipping Louis off his legs and almost off the bed, before catching him in a bruising grip around the wrist, and hauling him back up. 

“Do that again and you don’t get to finish tonight,” he breathes a hot breathed promise into Louis’ face. Louis smothers, shrinks, then looks up at him reprehensibly. 

“Then _do_ something,” he says. It’s immature and whining, perfectly executed, and Harry bounds up, tucked his legs beneath his body and hauling Louis down by a handful of his hair. 

Louis cries out, hands scrambling to brace at his sides and he falls forward, nose knocking against the hard pipeline of Harry’s thigh, eyes welling up at the force.

“Ow,” he says bluntly when he’s found some sort of balance at the awkward angle. Harry’s left hand comes down to cup his jaw, trace carefully over his features, reassuring, writing an apology into the skin. His right hand stays in a firm grip in Louis’ hair, scalp singed and shrieking underneath. 

Harry tugs him forwards, knocking his cock against the side of Louis’ face, drawing his hand up to angle it outwards, an arrow to Louis’ lips.

“Open,” he commands, voice black. Louis does, the head pushing past his lips immediately, dry and silk-soft against his tongue. Harry thrusts shallowly, all the way to the back of his mouth before drawing out again.

“Breathe,” he says, and Louis does, drawing in as much air as his lungs will allow, and Harry watches the expansion of his chest, and pushes back inside his mouth.  
Louis gags, mouth stretched wide open as a string of spit trails a fine line down to his chin, where it breaks and drips down to the mess of lube on his own lap.

Harry holds him there, hand fisted in his hair and cock blocking up his airway until Louis feebly reaches out for Harry’s legs, placing a loose grip on the backs of his thighs, body complacent but lungs struggling. 

Harry draws back, pulls Louis off by his hair, and he makes a soft sound once his lungs re-inflate, raggedly. Harry starts up a pattern, holding him by the hair, twisted into a hold at the back of his skull, forcing him down until his eyes are watering and his throat is contracting, drawing disfigured sounds and more and more saliva from the tiny spaces edged around Harry’s cock. 

 

Louis can almost pinpoint the moment he begins to slip under, when his throat begins to feel ten miles long, and Harry’s cock vomits up a blotch of pre-come against the back of his tongue as it pushes in, and his arms drops down to his sides on their own accord.

Harry pulls out with an ugly sound, and wraps a hand around himself. When he comes it’s thick and stringy, sticking to Louis’ face in congealed chunks that drip off when he drops his chin in aching agony. His jaw clicks in his ears as Harry falls back onto the mattress, kicking his legs out on either side of Louis. 

And Louis stumbles forwards, hands and knees until his head is just below Harry’s chin, and he’s looping a leg across Harry’s body, tugging at one of Harry’s too-thick arms to drop his hand over his own flushed and heavy cock.

“Make me come,” he says in an exhausted sulk, dropping his head to the mattress and letting his body flop in deadweight over Harry. 

“You’re such a bossy little sub,” Harry sighs, tone reprehending but hands rewarding. Louis laughs, a breathy giggle he’d be horrified by in any other state. 

 

Harry pulls him to climax quickly, sinking back down into the mattress as soon as Louis’ finished twitching in his hand, running his thumb across his slit in one last touch that lurches in Louis’ gut. 

 

Louis watches exhaustion settle in over Harry’s features as he closes his eyes, before extracting himself from the bed and padding to the bathroom, where the light grouches through his vision. 

He soaks a hand towel under the tap, and grabs another larger one from his hamper before coming back to the room, poking at Harry’s side. He groans, squinting at Louis through the dark, who ushers him to the side. 

He places the towel over the damp spot spreading into the mattress, before crawling back on to drip and dab over Harry’s body with the wet cloth. Harry hums out his weary thanks, rolling to his side and lifts an arm invitingly.

Louis accepts readily, feeling more than a little clumsy fingered as he fights with the duvet bunched at the end of the bed. He pulls it up after a slight skirmish. 

 

Finally settled, he rolls onto his back, draping the blanket over Harry and under his own ribcage. Harry’s arm is shifted with the motion, hand coming to rest over Louis’ chest piece.  
Louis nestles in to the touch, falling into the slow silence, eyes blinking open again when it’s broken by unexpected words.

“Not just a jersey number, then,” Harry says, voice etched with sleep, running a blunt nail over the ink.  
“No,” Louis blinks sleepily, rolling his head to the side to find Harry watching him, eyes hooded and glazed, but now with something closer to expectancy than lust. 

 

“Getting a team jersey with my own number was the first physical piece of proof that I hadn’t screwed up,” his voice comes out soft and pale in the dark, a light glow behind the curtains from the night sky. “That I was actually capable of having a dream and a goal, and following through with it.” His eyes fall shut as he talks slowly, opening them to find Harry still watching intently through the clutch of fatigue. 

“So you screwed up before,” Harry says, voice a black pitch to match the shadows in the room. Louis nods, twisting his shoulders to nose at the pillow. Through the still and silent moments, he was slowly learning to pick apart Harry’s words, sifting out the boredom and attacks to find the true purpose behind them. Limbs heavy and falling fast, he took the tone as a prompt, coaxing.

 

“My grades were never that impressive in school...there was always someone better than me on the pitch... But I worked my arse off for a position on that team. Never gave up on myself, even though coaches and teammates and scouts told me to my face that I’d never be good enough.” His eyes slip closed again, Harry’s hand still a warm weight over his chest. He imagines his heart pumping out a message, and Harry’s fingers catching it. 

“The whole world trying to put you down...” Harry’s voice is hardly words at this point, but a distant rumble that shakes through Louis’ breathing.

“Yeah...” there’s a sigh as his body sinks deeper, made more of air and feathers than flesh and bone. “S’okay though. I can take a bit of abuse,” and there’s a quiet laugh from Harry through the dark. 

Louis’ last thought before surrendering to sleep is that it’s the first time there’s been nothing lurking behind the sound.

 

* * *

 

There’s a sound, barely a breath in the dark, but Louis picks it out. A faint pressure on bedsprings, a whisper of blanket over skin.

Harry, making a slow and silent escape from the bed, and his stealth twists something sharp and rusted through Louis’ chest. Gentle, tender movements, as not to disturb him, and it burns.

 

“Just go,” Louis says softly. He curls closer into himself. He sounds small, never felt smaller, and there’s a hesitation, a flicker of doubt through the darkness before Harry moves off the bed. He dresses quickly, practiced and wordless.

 

The door clicks shut, and Louis waits for sleep. Eventually, it arrives. 

 

* * *

 

Morning comes with a burnt feeling and flavour to it, with fabric moist and glued to his legs.

There’s also an ache in his mind, a headache threatening to bloom as it registers that he has training today, tomorrow. It doesn’t erase the drive, but it overpowers it.

 

He pulls through the first day without incident, even manages to haul himself out with the team for a few hours. But it’s drab without drinking, sick of finding himself stuck in between conversations with competitive edges, and he heads home early. 

 

There’s a text from Harry, that simply reads _‘tomorrow?’_ and Louis agrees before his brain can catch up and think better of it. 

 

_‘Tomorrow’_ ends up being hell, the air alive with an icy bite to it, raining again, and practice drags on for years.  
Louis’ legs are balled up steel wool by the time he makes it back, head a baited mousetrap. 

 

The first thing Harry comments on when he steps in from the cold air is how worn Louis looks. It’s a condoling remark, but Louis can’t help but to bristle, offended, tossing back some uninspired shot at Harry’s appearance too. 

“Mr. Hyde today, then.” Harry drops his coat to the floor, a flat sound, and Louis sighs.  
“Practice got a little rough today, thanks for asking.” Harry raises his eyebrows, and Louis blindly takes it as a gesture to go on, and he runs with it. 

“We’ve usually only got two reference coaches with us per practice, but there were four of them today, and they just teamed up and reamed us out, had us running laps for hours. I’ve never had blisters this bad - “ Harry makes an unsympathetic noise, and Louis feels the hair on his neck bristle slightly. “It was completely unfair and uncalled for. I don’t know why they think pushing us like that is going to do any _good…”_ he trails off to take a breath, and fist his hands to his eyes. “It’s just _endless_ right now and I want it all to be over,” he complains, leaning back against the edge of the sink.

“Then quit,” Harry says, voice bland as he crosses his arms loosely in front of his chest.  
“I’m not going to _quit,_ Harry," Louis says, exasperated. "I'm just tired. I wish I could just ask them for a break…"  
"And why can't you?" There's something in his tone that suggests disinterest.  
"Because that's not how it works," Louis says, body weary and words to match.  
"So you're just going to let them run you down?" Something snide and ugly, critical, has latched itself to Harry's tongue. Louis knows it's his fault, but can't see to stop the vile water from dripping from his tongue and drenching his words with a spiked edge.  
"They're not _‘running me down,’_ they’re just...” Louis sighs, searching, and Harry interrupts.  
“Pushing you past your limits when they know you’re tired. Got it.”  
“I’m just tired and complaining. It’s not like they’re torturing us,” Louis snaps back, fatigue slowly draining from him as Harry’s sarcasm starts to nip, drawing blood.

“I think you like taking orders from them,” Harry continues dryly. “Sub in the bedroom, sub on the field...” Part of Louis knows he’s just trying to goad him on, get a reaction from him, get back at his bitchiness, and he makes a motion to take it back.

“Fine. Whatever, I’m just in a bad mood, I’m _sorry,”_ but the snide tone hasn’t quite made it out of his voice, and Harry scoffs. It’s too much, too long of a day, and some barrier inside finally breaks.

“Besides, being submissive during sex doesn’t have anything to do with how I act in other aspects of my life,” he says testily. “That’s the only thing you know about me, so you just try to lay it over every other part. It’s like you’ve got this idea of me built up in your head...and it’s not who I actually am.” Harry cocks an eyebrow at him. There’s finally something brewing behind his face, and Louis grits his teeth, taking a breath.

“You look at things like they’re one dimensional...you don’t bother looking for anything beneath the surface once you’ve made your impression. It’s not fair. We’re people, not pieces of paper!” The words explode out from his chest, pent and riled up and furious, hands shaking with the heat of it. He knows it isn’t frustration directed at Harry, but it’s built up and flooding out, too late to restrain.

“I’m here to fuck you, I’m not here to be your friend.” Harry’s voice is flat and level, and through it Louis wonder how much effort is involved in keeping it that way.

“Yeah, you’ve proved that a few times over. So just shut up and fuck me then, or just get out, I’m not going to put up with you just dicking me around like this,” he says, snappy and tight, giving himself rope burn from trying to wrench the reins back in.

“You want someone to get rough with you when we’re both pissed off? Are you honestly that stupid? I’m not sleeping with you like this,” Harry’s hand jerks in a rude sweep of Louis’ body. 

“Fine. D’you want tea?” Some incredulous wave breaks and caves over Harry’s stormy expression.  
_“Tea?”_  
“Tea. I’m making tea. Do you want some.” Louis’ back is to him now, as he begins to rustle through his cupboards, placing mugs and tea bags down haughtily on the counter. Filling the kettle and flicking it on, he glances over his shoulder at Harry. He’s standing silent, eyes wide and brow furrowed, watching Louis with a confused and livid sort of fascination.

“Don’t call me stupid, Harry,” Louis says airily once the kettle begins to whine. “We both know it’s not true, and honestly it just makes you sound like you’re out of insults.”

“I’d be less inclined to say it if you were less inclined to say stupid things,” Harry finally says back. It’s almost apologetic. Louis snorts, dropping the teabags into the mugs. Harry clenches his jaw.

“Proposing rough play when we’re both angry is stupid, Louis. People get hurt that way.” His tone is rigid, regulation, and Louis’ sick of it.

“If the smallest notion that you were going to hurt me ever crossed my mind you would be out of here so fast...” the kettle clicks off, and Louis pours the water into the mugs, brandishing one to Harry. “I’m not putting up with any bullshit from you. I like what we’ve got going on. And I do actually like _you,_ when you’re not putting on this arrogant dickhead act, so it’d be a shame to call it all off just because you like to pretend that I’m dumb.”  
Harry accepts the mug silently, and Louis continues.

“I like being submissive. It helps me ease out stress. But there’s no point in keeping this going if you’re the one causing me stress. I like being dominated but I don’t let people walk over me. And I’m certainly not letting you walk all over me. So drink your fucking tea, be fucking pleasant, either calm down enough to sleep with me, or go home, but either way you’re going to treat me with some goddamn respect in my own cock-sucking apartment!” 

Harry’s apprehensively quiet then. There’s a moment fuming while their tea steams, before Louis finally sighs and moves into the living room, sitting down on the couch as moodily as his full mug would allow. 

After a few beats, Harry follows, sitting at the opposite end. 

 

“Do you think we’re ever going to let our walls down and stop fighting?” Louis voice comes quietly as they sit, when he deems the air as bearing down on being comfortable.

“We got off on the wrong foot,” Harry’s reply comes, his words slow and spaced out through the distance between them.

“I know...shit, I haven’t been this tense in ages, and I blew up at you. That was...I’m just... I’m sorry.” There’s a quiet hum as Harry accepts it, and Louis shuts his eyes for a breath, feeling his pulse calm.

“We’ve both got pretty defensive masks on,” he offers after a beat, glancing over to find Harry watching him contemplatively. 

 

Louis sits, waits. Harry’s words take their time in reaching him.

“Reckon my face underneath is a bit defensive too... Don’t know about yours.” Louis shifts on the couch.

“Well...I’ll show you mine if -”

“Don’t finish that,” Harry groans, and as Louis looks over, he’s raising a hand to cover what looks impossibly like it might be a disgusted grin, cracking out and taking over. It’s gone in a heartbeat, covered by long fingers and a ducked head. 

“Think I see you smile less often than we see the sun around here,” he tries after a spreading silence.  
“Tell me we’re not talking about the weather,” Harry replies, lazy and drawling. “Have we really sunken that low?” 

Louis laughs quietly, mostly to himself. There’s still a faint strain between them, and he wants it gone. He stands, takes their mugs to the sink, for once uncluttered. Harry’s standing by the time he turns back around, looking uncertain, and Louis stops to think if he’s ever seen him look that way before. His mind comes up blank.

“Come to bed?” He offers softly, leaving the kitchen to walk down the hall, flicking the light on as he passes.  
Harry follows him, gravitates, and Louis is reminded of moths, blind to follow flames. 

 

And afterwards, when his head has been unscrewed, the cotton swabs insulating the walls removed, he thinks of moths again. His fingers feel tiny as he traces patterns over Harry’s abdomen, something beating inside his chest, gentle-winged and fluttering.


	16. Chapter 16

Louis goes into the studio with a song stuck in his head, lyrics caught in a pale loop, soft-footed and circling in his skull. 

It plays a gentle tune that narrates Zayn’s sweeping brush. Louis feels his hairs raise, like fingers quietly conducting. 

 

Outside, it’s gotten colder. Inside, Louis thinly worries about the tiny plants along the windowsill, wondering if they’ll survive the winter in this wide, white room, or if someone comes to claim them, take them home.

The weird pull of his body as he stands in warrior pose with bent arms snaps him slowly back to earth, like a rubber band.

 

“Going up to London on the weekend,” Liam says when they’ve finished with him. He places his camera in a carrier bag delicately, closing and clasping it shut. “Off to the Royal Opera House for a ballet performance.” He extends an arm to walk Louis out of the room. “I think it’ll make for a perfect transitional scene to introduce the dancers.” 

“The dancers in the project?” Louis questions as they enter the blue-lit stairwell. “They’re performing in London?”

“Of course,” Liam gives him a sideways look. “Didn’t Harry tell you?” There’s something sick and snide laying in wait beneath his words, and Louis tries to ignore it. 

“Didn’t mention it,” he mutters, taking the stairs two at a time. 

 

“Maybe you’d like to come up with me,” Liam says when they’re at the entrance of the building.  
Louis thanks him, says he’ll think about it. 

And he does, in between one million other thoughts.

 

* * * 

It’s raining again, when he walks over for his next session, wondering if the soles of his shoes have ever stayed dry for longer than a week. 

 

It’s still raining when he’s ready to walk back, so he dawdles, taking his time on the stairs, and brightening when he enters the auditorium to see Harry, spindling across the stage, one-footed and glorious in grace.

 

“Hey,” Louis greets, walking up to the edge of the stage. Harry ducks and weaves, slowing.

“Hi,” he returns, arching a foot to spin lightly up on his toes, arms outstretched. Up this close, Louis can see the strain of his muscles as he does, the illusion of it being effortless shattered as strings and bunches pull beneath his skin, chest blotched pink and sweating heavily. 

 

“Liam says you’re going to London,” Louis says after a while of watching Harry move, keeping his tone easy. The shapes Harry’s creating with his hands are captivating, telling stories in a language Louis doesn’t understand. 

“You already knew that,” Harry replies, voice some separate entity from the gentle sway and point of his body, the underlying strength and drip. 

Louis hoists himself up to sit on the edge of the stage. 

“Not about this weekend, though,” he says. “So you’re performing.” A single nod from Harry, perfectly in sync with the music and motions, so swift Louis almost misses it. 

“You could have asked me.” Harry’s eyes leave the stage to capture Louis. 

“Asked you.” It’s not a question, just a blunt repetition. 

“To come.” Harry stops dancing, walks forward a pace to sit on the stage beside him. He extends one leg in front of him, folds his body down in half over it.

“Have you ever been to the ballet before.” Again, it’s not a question, but it’s touched with a hint of snooty inflection that Louis thought they were past.  
“No, but Liam invited me to go with him,” he says back, words light and implication challenging. Harry looks at him, and Louis lets himself wander into the shade of his eyes, watered down in the washed out light of the studio. There’s some kind of burning malice in there, but Louis isn’t sure who it’s waiting for. 

“It’s a four hour drive,” Harry says finally.  “Time to enjoy the scenery then.” 

 

The walk home in the rain soaks and chills him, urged on by the promise of a hot shower, warm thoughts and palm.

 

* * *

 

A half hour in and he’s bored of the scenery. 

 

By the time they’re navigating through the maze of London’s roads, Louis has a sawtoothed edge of a headache, brought on by the constant drum of the car, and his attempt to keep up with Liam’s commentary as he drove - faster than Louis would have expected.

 

Walking in, Louis cranes his neck to stare up at the pillars.  
“Never been inside a _palace_ before,” he says aloud, and Liam laughs at his side. 

The interior is pure royalty to match the name, all crimson and gold, and Louis feels cheap and dirty. 

Trailing a path to their seats, he looks around at the tiers, all filled or filling, and tries to guess their numbers, intoxicated with the luxury. One thousand, easily. Two, surely. 

His amazement fades into a soft held breath when the lights dim, and reappear over the stage. A girl appears, small and willowy, delicately toeing her way to the center of stage. The audience is still and soundless now, an orchestra sliding up, up, until a second figure bounds out.

He’s tall, surely a different breed than the girl, and pristine in white, features dark and outlined under the stage lights. The music simmers, then rises, prospers.

 

Harry starts dancing, Louis stops breathing.

 

He steals the stage and the spotlight and every set of eyes in the house with astonishing leaps and twists and landings that look effortless, and impossible.

 

It’s a disorienting thought that crosses into Louis’ mind as he watches Harry. Dark and unfocused, like shadow puppets against a wall, the dizzying realization that he had touched him, had been inside him with his tongue and fingers, this creature that holds the stage between his teeth as he leaps and spins like a winged spider.

In comparison, Louis feels like a stutter, a hangnail, something vomited onto asphalt. 

 

They stay for the encore, and watch the front row guests applaud and toss things to the stage. Small bunches of flowers and handful bouquets, petals crushed and falling to pieces at the feet of the cast.  
Louis wishes he had brought something to throw too, faintly wonders if his heart would be enough.


	17. Chapter 17

The drive back to Manchester is clogged and choppy. Liam is bright and eager to talk of the performance, the acts and music, detailed aspects that have flown leagues above Louis’ head, and he struggles to keep up, and find worthy responses.

Louis feels the words dropping lifeless from his mouth, drivel, as he worms a way to twist the conversation back towards Liam’s project. Liam goes easily, slipping into the new topic, touching on camera settings and lessons in foreground shooting. Things Louis hardly grasps, but is more than happy to sit back and sink into. 

As Liam watches the road, Louis watches passion dip and dance across his face, his own head cluttered with crescendos and symbol crashes.

 

Harry stays out of town for over a week. Louis’ messages are read but unanswered, including a congratulatory text several times revised before being sent. 

 

When Louis finds himself tidying up his apartment, and shoving the scrappiness into his closet once again, there’s a chill to the air that sneaks its way into bones, and lingers before finally fading. 

 

Rain has been threatening but still sits unfallen in the clouds when Harry steps inside, the cold and promise of damp clinging to his coat, trailed in by his boots scuffing the tiles. 

Louis starts in with something dull that feels like a requirement, some stuffy version of how have you been, there on top of his congratulations, his awe from the recital still alive and stirring in his chest.

Harry cuts him off, brushes it aside with a guttural _“later,”_ and Louis finds himself lifted up on his toes, Harry’s arms steel cables suddenly holding all his weight as their lips meet, collide and mold together. 

 

Louis lets Harry peel off his clothes, step back and peel off his own, before he’s being wrestled to the bed, putting up no resistance, body soft and yielding to the violence and sureness of Harry’s hands. 

There’s a quiet chaos burning beneath Harry’s skin, and it unfolds as he moves his hands, flat-palmed and iron-knuckled, to every curve and press of Louis’ body. 

 

His skin begins to feel bruised and battered under the force of Harry’s eyes, and it’s a twisted relief when he moves in to bite down, claim, mark, violate.  
There’s an ounce of barely-there hesitation in Harry’s movements, and Louis sends it crashing to the ground to break into one million pieces, with a quiet plea of _please, more…_

 

Harry slowly pulls him into pieces, cutting away the seams and stitches with time and precision. 

Louis cries out once, only once, impatiently, and Harry’s hands freeze, biting lead and mercury into Louis’ bloodstream. 

_“Hurry up,”_ and it dies on his lips as Harry turns to ice, and takes hours.

 

Louis loses count of the times he’s walked to the edge, only to have Harry pull him back gently by the hand. His mind is screaming, high up in its chest, a choir of gulls and hounds and feral cats and crashing cars.

 

Days pass, maybe, and Harry’s speaking again, screaming through the downpour, calling through the fog.

_“I need you to tell me if it’s too much.”_

Louis writhes under the heat of his hands, flushing and gasping. 

_“Louis.”_

He turns his head, twisting his neck and panting open mouthed into the sheets, and the only sound he seems capable of making is a fractured whine, high and breaking.

_“No! Look at me!”_

Louis flinches, and Harry catches him by the throat, tipping his chin up until they’re facing, Harry’s eyes fierce and unwavering, Louis’ blinking up at him wetly.  
_“Lou.”_

A moment, a breath. 

_“You need to be able to say ‘when,’ or we’re stopping this.”_

Louis tries to form a response, a word, anything, but all that comes out is a small broken noise, the onset of a sob, and Harry draws back. 

_“Then we’re done.”_

Then he pulls away, sitting back on his heels, severing all the contact they had. Panicked, Louis tries to sit up, pushing his arms down to gain some kind of leverage. He makes it halfway, stomach shuddering and arms shaking.

Finally, finally Louis finds himself struggling to speak, spitting out words half chewed and spit slick. 

“No, no, no no no Harry don’t, don’t,” he draws in a hiccuping breath. “I can do it, don’t stop, I’ll say it, I can do it.” Harry watches him, eyes bare and cold, and he edges forwards. Louis lets his body fall back against the mattress immediately.

“If you can’t communicate with me we’re not doing this.” The words are spoken into the air between their mouths.

“I can Harry, I will, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I get so caught up in it feeling good, and it’s _so hard, Harry I’m sorry.”_ The words that had been so impossible to form before are now pouring out of him, manic and nearly slurred. “But I’d say if it wasn’t okay, I’d be able to, I promise - “ Harry raises a finger to his lips, silencing him, leaning in and down to press his mouth against Louis’ collarbones.

“Slow down,” he speaks into his skin, trailing letters with his tongue. “Just breathe.” Louis obeys, eyes closing, limbs feeling weak and something winged flutters inside his chest.

“Up,” Harry commands, pulling at his arms. Louis raises them back above his head, and Harry catches his wrists in a tight grip, holding them in one hand.  
Sliding his body up, he kicks Louis’ legs apart, forcing his hips in between. His free hand runs roughly down his body, stopping between his legs and gripping Louis impossibly, unforgivably tight.

 

Louis’ lungs are waterlogged, and he moans, feeling an ocean swell and break in his solar plexus. 

 

Above their heads, Harry’s fingers tighten around Louis’ wrists. Between their legs he pushes his palm down, pressure building and rolling as he licks his way down Louis’ throat. A particularly firm downward thrust has Louis lurching upwards, struggling against the hold. Harry growls against his jugular, squeezing his wrists tighter, warningly.

_“Still,”_ he enforces the word with a toothy kiss against his shoulder and grinds his pelvis down, circling his hips until Louis is crying out beneath him. He tries to concentrate on making his body go lax, on repressing the instinct to fight against the brute strength holding him down. 

Harry is an unrelenting force, dulled down fingernails sinking into the skin at Louis’ wrists, his grip so tight that Louis can barely feel it, barely register the half-moon marks pressed white against his skin. 

There’s a brief battle in his mind to fall back, stop struggling, stop _trying,_ and then Harry’s hands begin to push at him, drag at him, take, and invade, and conquer. 

 

Soon Louis finds it’s not an effort anymore, and that his body has sagged down on its own, bones small on the bed, all the chaos and neon lights flashing in his head placated, quietened.

 

He’s been flipped back onto his stomach at some point, and it’s a soft and gentle shock to learn it’s gone unnoticed. Outside the wind is breathing leaves against the windowpane, damp and weighted down from the rain. 

It’s an abstract thought next, that someone should shut the window to stop the rain from coming in, and then the very distant voice of reasoning, quietly reminding him that it _is_ shut, and the dampness inside is from Harry’s slick wet fingers, his tongue, and the tears on Louis’ cheeks, soaking into the pillowcase.

 

He falls asleep, crying, with a fading awareness of being cradled, and sung to.


	18. Chapter 18

Louis wakes, mind dark and foggy, and growing trees in the depth, thick with the sound of footsteps against fallen leaves, the smell of earth. 

 

He tries to blink away the darkness, and there’s a small choked sound of primitive fear when he can’t, the room black and wind howling a lonely chorus. 

 

“Easy,” comes a cashmere and navy voice, soaking out of the shadows beside him, and he jumps, a spooked motion as his numbed and heavy limbs try to crawl towards the sound.

“I’ve got you,” says the blue-black weight, and Louis finds arms anchored around his body, drawing him in closer, and smoothing the goosebumps from his skin and rattles from his lungs.

 

He’s slow to come back from it, even with sleep, and Harry’s heartbeat beneath him lulls him into something stable. The fear falls off in chipped pieces, until he’s left with the steady rise and fall of Harry’s body. 

 

Harry gets up from the bed after a while of just lying there, tangled peacefully, and Louis whimpers at the loss of warmth when the blanket is lifted. He does his best to get upright, ending in some halfway ragdoll slouch against the headboard. He’s left with a gentle touch of fingertips to cheekbone, and a hushed promise of a fast return. 

The sound of feet padding off over the carpet is pulse-close, and Louis feels his eyes slipping shut, opening again when the mattress dips down, and Harry is bringing a glass to his lips, one hand cupped around his skull, encouraging him to drink.  
His mouth tastes stale as he swallows, Harry’s thumb wiping away the drops from his chin. Sturdy hands the size of houses ease him back beneath the covers.

 

When he wakes again, minutes, hours, years later, he’s nestled in to the crook of Harry’s neck, and his mind feels almost settled. 

“Your dancing is really beautiful,” Louis hears himself say, and Harry stirs beside him.  
“Thank you,” he replies, cement and floral wallpaper, debris and silk ribbons.

“So how was it?” Louis asks, voice soft in the delayed aftermath. He feels winded, not in his lungs but in his skin. And inside, his organs feel pleated, neatly arranged in gentle peals. “Performing up there...”

“It was good,” comes Harry’s reply. Louis smiles, his face pressed to the pillow.  
“That’s all you’re giving me?”   
“Think I’ve given you enough tonight,” Harry says. Louis opens his eyes to see Harry watching him, eyes deep and colourless in the dark. 

“It was wonderful. A taste of everything I’ve been working towards. Does it feel like that when you play?” Something lifts up and away from Harry’s voice, and it’s as if there’s an innocence on display, some vulnerable spot revealed, if closely guarded. “Everything clicking into place?”   
“Yeah,” Louis exhales. “Finally where you belong.” Silence sways and clings to them, and it’s a while before anything else is said.

 

“Did you have fun with Liam?” Against the veil of darkness, and between the sheets, the weight of something tense in Harry’s voice opens Louis’ eyes again, feeling Harry sling an arm around his waist beneath the covers.

“Yeah,” Louis answers slowly. “I’m glad I got to see it.” Harry’s eyes are shimmering and analytical. 

“You always seem to steal me away when he gets too close...” Louis twirls a loose thread from his duvet around a finger absently, looking up at Harry through his lashes, overgrown and overweight with sleep.

“I don’t like him,” Harry replies curtly, shifting his weight down to spread evenly over Louis’ lower half, colossal and painless.  
“Well I gathered that,” Louis scoffs, wriggling slightly to adjust under the pressure. “Do I get a clue as to why?” Harry skirts a hand down the side of Louis’ face, brushing his fringe from his eyes, sweat-laced and dried tacky.

“He’s not a good person.”  
_“Liam.”_ Louis’ voice is flat with disbelief.

“I don’t like the way he treats you.” There’s suddenly something fierce in Harry’s words, and a protective grip bruises over Louis’ hip. Louis swallows, watching flames spread in a slow burn across Harry’s face.

“Again...we’re talking about _Liam.”_   
“Don’t you see it?” First, second, third degree burns lick through the heat between their skin.  
“See what, Harry?” Louis laughs, an exasperated sound. “Don’t tell me he’s in love with me, and your jealousy is going to start telling me who I can and can’t be friends with...”  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harry’s voice falls flat and gristly, and he leans in to nip at Louis’ neck. “Who tells people who they’re not allowed to have as friends? That’s absurd.”  
“Getting sidetracked, babe,” Louis says, letting his neck fall back, open to the onslaught of Harry’s teeth. There’s a slight hesitation at the pet name.

“He’s not in love with you, anyway,” Harry finally says, pausing to suck a brutally garish colour into the flesh before his mouth. “I don’t think he’s capable of loving anyone but himself. It bothers me that you can’t see it yourself. You’re always trying to convince me that you’re not stupid...”  
“Hey!” Louis swats the back of Harry’s head. There’s a dark chuckle against his throat.

“Maybe his intentions in talking to you were initially for this film he’s stapling together...but everything aside from that is entertainment.”  
“Entertainment.” Louis pulls back from the needling of Harry’s teeth, a deep throb now occupying the skin from his shoulder to chin.

“Him and that artist. Both of them in this fucked up little world where they screw with people’s heads.” Louis’ quiet now, watching something that could be repulsion distort Harry’s face into a soft snarl. “Taylor warned me about them. And seeing it up close she’s right. They lure people in, one or the other, and start this cat and mouse game, toying with affections, finally pouncing and then laughing it off together. I think they score points to who their victim gives in to first,” Harry says, words black and conspiratorial.

Louis opens his mouth to tell him it’s absurd, but finds there’s no argument waiting on his tongue. He leans in to kiss him instead, whining poutily when Harry twists his face to the side, coming in to latch on to Louis’ neck again.

“You’re protecting me, then,” Louis says, going soft and quiet under the aggression of Harry’s teeth and tongue.  
“Just not giving those manipulators the satisfaction,” comes Harry’s response, hot and low, spoken through spit and skin. Louis shivers through the heat.

“So I’m satisfying you...” He means for it to come out as a statement, partially a tease, but the end flicks up, questioning.

Harry replies with a slow grind, his cock half hard again and filling up against Louis’ stomach. 

Again, Louis succumbs to it, lets the undertow drag him down below. 

 

* * *

 

When Louis wakes, he keeps his eyes closed, feeling the sunrise halo through his window.

Harry’s erection is a soft press to the cleft of his arse, harmless and unmoving, a quiet comfort in the still light.

Louis wonders if he pressed himself back, waking Harry with soft movements and violent intent, how he would respond, if his arms would stir to encircle him, ready to respond. 

But he isn’t sure they’re there, isn’t sure where they stand at all, so he keeps his body still, falls back to sleep.

 

They both wake fully shortly after, Harry rising and stretching, catlike in the early sun, goes off to shower.

 

When Louis finally leaves the bed, wanders down the hall, he finds Harry, body beaded with water, dripping down and blank and pale as a sheet of paper. 

Louis wants to fold him into shapes and watch him fly. 

 

He flies away unaided soon after, but not before Louis sees his feet in the light. 

The nails are brutally short, the edges seem to be frayed, two faintly blue, and Louis thinks of the breathless way he seems to move. The knuckles are stained with wine coloured bruises, and they look tender rather than powerful, like he’s one step away from breaking.


	19. Chapter 19

The rain is unrelenting for the next week, next two weeks. The chill in the wind plants a stiffness in Louis’ bones, and they creak and complain when he runs, and holds himself stock still in the white studio. 

 

Zayn feels cold along with the weather, and as he stands motionless, Louis tries to dissect the way he feels and the way the artist is acting, tries to keep them separate from each other. 

 

He feels separated too. Liam’s eyes ignoring him while he lets his camera be his face, and Zayn only speaking to crane his muscles higher, tone short and emotionless. 

 

A paranoid feeling creeps back in and makes itself at home under Louis’ skin. Two weeks of water welling up around him, and Harry’s quiet words. 

 

There’s a vulnerable tic sliding secretively, swimming through his blood, lessened and worsened by the uncaring drop in Zayn’s eyes, and the lack of attention from Liam, as if Louis suddenly became boring overnight, outdated. 

 

He drags himself through his practices. Wades in past his knees and over his waist until it tugs him down and fills his lungs. Through the struggle comes a light, a reminder that he’s good at this, as he pushes himself into that place in his head, where the edges blur and his body’s flames. 

Flames that fizzle out as the grey skies cloud his head, but it’s still fire, it still burns. 

 

Small hours come in the night when he finds himself sleepless, and unable to quiet the din behind his eyes. He tries to slow his breathing, trick his body, and it retaliates by kicking up a fuss when the sun rises, pale and aching. 

 

There’s a separation not just from the world, but inside himself, and he wants it gone, wants the rain gone, wants all the little noises and little worries gone. 

He resorts to throwing himself into his training, and it catches him, finding sick thrills on the pitch, the imitation green a sour colour beneath his feet. The string and snap of muscle slices through the indigestion in his brain, and he lets himself get lost in it. 

Encourages it even, spinning his compass and shredding maps with shaken fingers. 

 

Dates are officially announced for their first games, and his stomach drops out, a pulpy mess that crushes and leaks on the ground. There’s a swelling in his brain, a rush between his toes. 

 

His following session in the art studio drags by. His body slides like a sigh into some position, joints tweaking until it’s deemed acceptable.

As he waits - and it hasn’t felt like waiting before - he feels a dripping pick up, the confines of his skull filling up, drowning some patient reasoning out of him. 

Not just filling up with static this time, but with confusion laced thoughts, flashing bulbs and ballet shoes. 

 

But a manic sort of excitement is first and foremost, heart like a kick drum in his chest, and the dim possibility of being sick from it. 

 

Louis wants to share the high with someone who’s not feeling it there with him, brothering him on the field or supporting him from home.  
He wants to spill open to someone who’s not on his team, spilling with him, not family, but not unfamiliar, and he finds there’s only one name waiting. 

He pushes down what he’s really looking for, leaving the call unanswered in his gut, overshadowed by the thrill anyway. 

 

His feet tug him towards and into the art studio, straight to the stage, and it feels odd for that to be his destination, a shocking flavour in his mouth, cheeks pink from the cold outside. 

There’s a man at the piano bench, and his fingers freeze and fold when Louis enters, skates to the stage. He’s burning with a fever of news, and it bursts pus-like from his lips. 

There’s so much that’s alive and swimming through his skin, and he doesn’t notice that the distance in Harry’s eyes is back, colour vacant. Doesn’t pay attention to the clipped response he gets, and he leaves the room with too many thoughts, escorted out by the sound of the piano, with too many hidden strings. 

 

* * *

 

He’s a rush of words and tapping pulse when Harry arrives that night, spinning through reflected practices, the firecrackers alive and bursting through his legs, the dates now a countable number of months and weeks away.

He slows to a faltering stop when he sees that Harry isn’t rushing too, but standing silent as watercolour, lines bleeding and shape faded.

 

There’s a clouded over look in Harry’s eyes, empty at first glance, from those beginning days, and even now Louis can’t find the right word to suit the hollowness that sits in his gaze, and the way his bitter, snapping answers make conversations feel like trying to stay between the lines.

And it’s always red when the colour spills over. 

 

It’s too simple to drop back to a defensive stance, and start snapping back in retaliation. The air slowly fills with the sound of tooth on tooth, clicking and terrible, sending shivers shooting like arrows down spines. 

 

It’s Harry who calls it off, stepping forward to grasp at Louis’ hands, where he’s raking his fingers up and down his forearms. Louis looks up at him, eyes anxious, and wide, and blue, but not blue enough to drown in and Harry’s pulling back, looking away, as if to wash the taste out. 

 

“This isn’t working,” Harry says. “I’m too wound up, and you’re all over the tracks, I can’t keep up.” It’s blunt and cryptic at the same time, and Louis stands, shifting his weight and demanding an explanation.

 

“I’m busy,” and it’s halfhearted, so Louis digs, pushes.

 

“I’ve just been given a piece, and they changed the choreography to something new. On top of my scheduled lessons there’s too much to focus on. I’m _busy,_ Louis, I’ve told you that I’m busy, and it translates into _this_ when I’m tired -” Harry sweeps an arm in a halfway arc. There’s violence to the gesture, but stripped back Louis can read it as pressure.

“I know, Harry. Sorry for just dumping all that on you...” inwardly he hates himself for trivializing something that’s been breathing life into the downpour that’s been aching through his bones, and he sighs testily. “It’s been a big week for me, and I thought I’d share it.”  
“I’m happy for you,” Harry says. It sounds too much like a muttered constraint, and Louis lets the anger simmer in his stomach. 

“I _know_ you are,” he levels. “And I’m sorry I got caught up in everything. I should have noticed you were caught in something else.”  
“There’s no reason for you to have,” Harry clips, and Louis finds a frown burning creases in his face.

“I really think we should stop pretending,” he says after a moment. Harry’s eyes fly up to catch the troubled workings of his face. “You’re not a robot, Harry. You snap when you’re stressed, and I snap when I’m snapped at...” Something stirs in Harry’s eyes, but it’s not what Louis’ looking for.

“It’s really not a functional formula,” he says, monotone creeping back to take the place of anything heated in his words. Louis shuts his eyes, breathes.

“It would be if you just talked to me more,” he finally says, and the words feel sharp coming out, not sharp towards Harry, but slicing and ruining his tongue. Harry doesn’t reply, and Louis wants to scream.

“If you have too much going on... If you’re really too busy, then just _tell_ me, Harry,” he says, and it comes out gentle. “I don’t want to be something you’re rearranging things to make room for. If I don’t fit, then tell me. I don’t want it to be like this. I don’t want it to feel like an obligation.”  
“It doesn’t feel like an obligation,” Harry says quietly. He doesn’t address the rest.

“I’m not going to be offended if you say you don’t want to see me when things get tight,” Louis continues, picking at the edge of his thumbnail. “I’d rather wait until we’re not going to be fighting and at each other’s throats.” Harry seems to have calmed, the vicious forked part of his stance eased off. 

“Tea?” Louis offers, squinting one eye as he gauges Harry’s reaction. It’s a strained laugh, light but present.  
“It’s my go-to tension defuser,” Louis says. “Fixes everything.”  
“Alright,” Harry answers, shaking his head, small smile still lingering. “But then I should leave. I have the temper of a toddler when I’m this tired.” It’s an admission, the timid blooming of the first flower through the frost, and Louis laughs, filling the kettle.

“I know toddlers. You’ve got a bit more malice to you than they do,” he says. Looking back, he can see shadows spread beneath Harry’s eyes, a stiff line knotting up his shoulders, and kicks himself for not picking out these details sooner. He deals a mental kick to Harry too while he’s at it, just for fairness.

“Why do you know toddlers?” Harry asks, sinking into a chair tucked in to the table.  
“Got a lot of siblings. Grew up knee-deep in toddlers,” Louis says, pulling out a chair opposite while the kettle starts to sing.

“How many’s a lot?” Harry props his head up with his hands, elbows along the edge of the table.  
“Six,” Louis answers, and Harry makes an impressed face. “I’m the oldest.”  
“Wouldn’t have pegged you as the oldest,” Harry says. “You’re so...” he gestures, interrupted by a yawn. “Thought all first borns were all uptight, controlled types.”  
“You, then?” Louis says with a smile, getting up again to fill two mugs, and set them down on the table.  
“I’m the youngest, actually,” Harry replies, a soft smirk decorating his face. Louis laughs.  
“A little sad we’re just now learning the first date questions,” he says, wrapping a hand around his mug. It pulses a hot wave through his hand. 

They’re quiet after that, talk dwindling until things feel a bit more cooled off and drinkable. 

 

Finally, Harry stands, placing his mug in the sink and in the ordinary movement Louis catches the grace that ribbons out of his wrists when he dances.

 

“I should head out,” he says, “and go to bed.” Louis watches him stand unmoving for a beat, smoothing the words out in his head.

“You don’t have to leave to go to bed, Harry,” he finally says, and it seems to be the reply Harry was waiting for, but he remains motionless.

 

“Alright.” The reply is black ice waiting on a curve, and Louis tiptoes around the tension. He’s a heartbeat away from Harry changing his mind, so he stands, walks off towards his room. 

There’s a long enough pause before Harry joins him that he thinks he’s left. 

 

They both undress, and it feels too much like they’re about to strike a pose and turn to statues.

 

Something awkward and bowlegged sprawls its way between them on the bed, and it’s not until Louis shifts in to kiss Harry that it leaves. There’s a moment of horror stirring potions in the pit of Louis’ stomach before Harry kisses back. 

Louis snakes a hand down to rub him through his pants, quietly bringing him off while Harry nestles into his neck and shoulder, breaths shallow and already seeming half asleep.

It’s the first time it’s been something simple, and Louis closes his eyes, feeling Harry come hot into his palm. He bats away Harry’s hand after he’s finished, quietly commanding that he go to sleep. Harry presses an open mouthed kiss to Louis’ shoulder before complying. 

He’s gone in the morning, and there’s something cold sliming through Louis’ pores in his place.


	20. Chapter 20

The sun’s far down on the horizon when he goes in for his next session, bumped later in his schedule for one of his rare days off.

Zayn’s back to teasing and burning eyes, and Louis’ glad he’s almost finished with posing for him. The artist playing hot and cold has left his skin feeling numbed and twitching, his head beaten, whisked and frothy from trying to keep up. 

 

While he poses on display, thighs being devoured by a starved stare, the thought slithers in that maybe it’s just from getting high, and Harry’s theory is meaningless. 

There’s nothing waiting to explain Liam’s actions though, and Louis catches amusement tacked onto his face when Zayn makes a crude comment about Louis’ body, and he doesn’t bother speaking up against it, appreciative or offended. He simply stands, and when he’s told they’re finished, dresses and flees.

 

There’s a blocked apology waiting for him when he finds himself drawn towards the stage again. The piano stops as he moves unsurely, and his heart feels sluggish without the chorded narrative. 

Harry comes to the edge of the stage to meet him. Sweat is blistering against his skin, leotard filmy and see through over his chest. When Louis asks how long he’s been dancing, he laughs a strangled and humourless sound, replies, _“days I think.”_ It’s a joke, Louis knows, but another part of him drinks it in without disbelief. 

 

Harry asks if he’ll stay, treading carefully, and Louis simply nods, and lifts himself up to sit. 

 

The pianist starts up again. As far as Louis can see from the angle, there’s no sheet music, and his eyes are closed. 

As a song forms through the chords, Louis’ eyes feel like closing too. It’s slow, but driven, something dark amid in the low notes. Harry returns to the stage, standing and rolling his shoulders, waiting before stretching his body up, impossibly tall, then shrinks down again. He’s barely moving, and Louis’ already transfixed by him.

 

There’s something troubling between the keys, and something troubled in the way that Harry moves to them. There’s a rattle to his skin, a humming through his body. It looks pained - not his movements - his body looks like felt pressed to shapes, swift and slight. But the emotion held in his face, caught between his fingers...

Louis wants to reach out, hold them between his own, rub the tremble from the footwork.

 

The notes are getting higher, and Harry’s spinning, a glimmer shining through suffering. The quiet lighting is softly catching patches of his skin, and Louis thinks of fingerpads pressed against tissue, bird bones, breathing slipping into sleep.

 

He’s sitting in quiet awe by the time Harry finishes, thanking the man at the piano, before coming to sit beside Louis. There’s a hole of silence as they wait to be alone before someone speaks.

“I’ll walk you home, if you like,” and there are rolling thunderheads stitched between the words. 

 

It’s grey outside. Louis’ fingers get the idea to reach out for Harry’s a breath before Harry tucks his into the pockets of his coat. Louis’ strides don’t quite match up beside him. 

 

Inside Louis’ apartment it’s grey too, and there’s a shock of colour when Harry takes his shoes off, the corner of his foot damp and crimson. 

“Jesus, doesn’t that hurt?” Louis asks, hurrying to the bathroom to run the tap and conjure up a cloth. 

“It’s fine,” Harry says, lifting his foot to hold under the stream. He doesn’t flinch, but Louis flinches for him. “It happens.” 

“It’s crazy that you can just...perform through that,” Louis says quietly, watching the water run pink for a moment, the faint notion of queasiness stirring up inside him.

“That’s part of it,” Harry replies, shutting off the tap and patting his foot dry. The water hasn’t magically healed anything, and the skin still looks bruised and tender, pigments screaming softly. “The choreography has to be perfect. It wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t.” Louis wants to look away from the battered parts, doesn’t know where to fit his eyes instead. He finds Harry’s eyes, washed out to a pale green cradled in mist in the artificial light.

“Just because something’s not perfect...” he trails off to silence, a rasp of off-white keys still echoing in his ears. He doesn’t know how to finish it, doesn’t know how to follow up. 

 

The sound’s still haunting through his skull when Harry takes him by the hand, leads him to his bed, and he lets Harry take him under. Clouded water fills his lungs and drowns the music in his head. He hears it fading before he fades too.

 

By the time it runs clear from his skin he’s one thousand leagues under, two thousand. Harry’s hands catch him before he settles to the bottom.

 

They lie together like sunken ships.

 

But Louis wakes alone amid debris and rusted nails, and the blanket feels like all the pressure of the ocean, crushing the life from his lungs.

He rolls over and tries to sink his way back to sleep, but finds the seabed to be dreamless.


	21. Chapter 21

Louis wakes unchanged, sheets cool and twisted around his legs.

Outside the sky hangs low and heavy, clouds sagged and vacant. A mute choir of birds group together on a wire. Louis counts them from the window, streaked with raindrops, and he can’t quite make out the number before they fly away. Four, maybe, five. 

 

He falls into a daydream of feathers and flight. He tries to embody the hollow grace on the field, sharp-beaked and wide-eyed. 

He falls back into his training with more focus and dedication, and he finds it a little funny how readily it pulls him in. 

 

There’s a missed call when he finishes for the day, flies back home to nestle in and let his body breathe. 

A voicemail, and it’s unexpectedly Liam’s voice, tinny and fake through the phone, sounding like a machine.  
Louis sits numbly, listens as he’s dismissed by a recording, a chirping voice that’s all business and thank you’s, an abrupt hang up and Louis’ left blinking on the edge of his bed. 

 

There’s another call, later, when he’s balled himself under his blanket. It’s Harry’s number, and he lets it ring, lets himself be tired. 

 

It feels like nothing has changed when his routine stops including morning lapses of playing statue. The fall back to normalcy leaves him shaken but standing.

 

He thinks about calling Harry back, in between waking up and running laps and drills. He puts it off, keeps putting it off until he counts the days that have passed, and finds it’s slow and startling. 

 

Louis debates walking over to slip inside the auditorium again, but the art studio feels unwelcoming and off limits, something balled up inside that’s keeping him from returning, and it tastes a lot like pride.

It’s the same flavour that spikes up when he thinks of calling - something bittersweet that reminds him of waking up alone between sheets that smell like Harry. 

 

He texts instead, finally one afternoon, a heating pad spread over his calves, and something green and awful pureed in a glass on his coffee table. 

 

Harry slips inside, and the movement is slimy and shameful. Louis wants to wash the grease from his skin, mold him into a new shape. 

 

Harry doesn’t ask where he’s been, and Louis leaves it, kisses a stain onto his mouth, and the push of their chests becomes an aggressive, bruising competition. Louis’ losing, knows he’s losing, but doesn’t surrender until he feels Harry hard against him, hands peeling his clothes off in a slow ruin. 

 

They make a mess of Louis’ sheets, bunching and casting aside, Louis licking his way into Harry’s mouth, squeezing his eyes shut as he feels his tongue nipped and violated. 

 

The sun sinks below the skyline, offended by the waves their bodies are creating, and unable, unwilling to bear witness.

 

Louis can hear the music starting up again, out of tune notes rattling out a melody, fingers needling, playing the keys of his vertebrae, a song of shivers and raised hairs.

 

Harry slides inside him like an invitation, and Louis’ muscles clench, tighten, desperate and determined to keep him, hold him inside this time. 

 

When Louis comes it’s with a wet whine that tapers off into a soft whimper, high pitched as his body arches and shakes, too fast, and too sudden, inescapable. 

Harry slows, but doesn’t stop, his hands gripping in a furious hold under Louis’ legs, and he lowers his face to bury in the crook of his neck, breath a dark and humid stain against his skin.

 

If fingers were teeth, Louis’ thighs would be a massacre, bloody and bitten from unrelenting jaws and raking fangs. 

 

By the time Harry’s finished, Louis’ skin feels raw and paper thin. 

 

Louis lets him leave when the sun begins to creep its fingers through the window. He silently demands a kiss first, and their dirty tongues lull and tug together, mixing stale and sour potions inside their mouths. 

 

He tries to tell himself he’s not bitter, but there’s an aftertaste stretched across his tongue he just can’t swallow down.

 

* * *

 

Louis’ shoulders are knotted and tense as he slogs back from his practices, rain pouring against the windows and making him feel like he’s trapped inside a carwash. 

 

Harry calls as he’s filtering clothes into his washing machine, doing his best to group like-colours together, and giving up by the end of his laundry basket. 

 

He’s tired, skin feeling a few sizes too tight for his skeleton. He agrees, hangs up, and regrets doing so in a flurry of action, numbly holding his phone in an outstretched hand, checking the time, then jumping in the shower.

The water pressure’s low and awful with the washer running at the same time, and the hot water drools a slow drizzle over his body. It does nothing for the clouds brewing up his spine and leaking into his brain. 

 

He feels tightly wound and itchy by the time evening sets in and pink clouds roll and twist and turn grey and silent. 

 

There’s a quiet sort of calculation when Harry arrives, both looking over the other carefully, and there’s a flare of annoyance as Louis watches Harry’s demeanour shift, like he’s treading carefully. 

“Haven’t seen you at the studio lately,” Harry tries, and his tone is wary, carefully stepping between curiosity and mere observation.  
Louis shrugs, folding his arms then unfolding them a second later, trying to keep his body language in check. 

“Yeah, Liam said they got everything they needed and wouldn’t need me to come in anymore.” He wonders if it comes off sounding the way it feels in his head, part whiny, part rejected. Harry looks surprised, still watching Louis’ guarded stance carefully.

“Really? I didn’t think they were close to being finished yet,” he says, and it’s conversational, small talk, and Louis desperately wants to change the subject to anything else.

“Well, then they just got sick of me.” There’s a snap to his words that was supposed to come out as a quip, but picks up too much edge and scratches all the way out. Harry flicks an eyebrow up at the sharpness in his tone.  
“With an attitude like yours? Imagine… .” Louis bristles, then pulls himself back in.

“Not in the mood,” he mutters, examining his fingernails, clipped short and partially bitten. 

“Not in the mood for what in particular? Because if this is just a waste of time...” Harry angles himself back towards the door, and Louis notes that he hasn’t taken his shoes off yet.

“Can we stop pretending that’s the only thing that brings you here,” Louis says, and his voice is quiet, shoulders haven’t lost their griping position, and there’s uneasiness lacing his throat.  
Harry sighs, long suffering, but doesn’t head for the door yet.

“Why are you so worked up, then? Because two assholes decided they didn’t feel like wasting your time anymore?”  
“No. I don’t care what they do,” Louis says back. “Just a lot going on lately, I’ve been getting caught up with training and...” he tapers off with a vague and elaborative hand movement, hoping it’s enough to summarize everything - the weather, the state of his head, the inner workings of his life. 

“So now you’re the one agreeing to meet up with your head in a bad place,” Harry says, watching the shadows on Louis’ face as he chews at his lower lip. “If you want to me leave...”

“No!” It’s overly eager, but still snappish. “That’s not... it helps, you know? I’m just tense... and it’s been a while,” as soon as he says it he wants to pull it back in and twist it into something that sounds less desperate, less reliant. “Been a while since you’ve been here,” he tries again, and looks up to see his attempt to smooth things over has left an affronted look on Harry’s face.

“That’s not my fault,” he says, and the storm seems to have shifted from Louis’ temples to Harry’s throat. “I told you I’m busy, _and_ I called you...” 

“I know you did,” Louis says, and he feels exhausted suddenly, all the energy draining from his body to take up residence in his hands, angry and jittering. “I’ve just had other things going on...” He wants to say more, something confrontational, ask why he always leaves only to come back and criticize his bad moods when he’s harbouring his own beneath the surface, but his thoughts are interrupted.

“Other things going on with those two snakes before they dropped you?” There’s a cold and biting slime to Harry’s voice that Louis hates, knows is put on, but it still cuts. 

“I wasn’t interested in either of them,” He spits back, but it feels feeble and defensive in comparison. There’s a sinking swirl of dread in his stomach as he watches them fall back into fighting, but there’s nothing there inside to help him stop it. 

“Maybe not after I opened your eyes to what they’re really like,” Harry retorts, and Louis draws up a hand to run it shakily through his hair. 

“I can’t deal with you switching back and forth like this,” he snaps, and he knows it’s unfair, knows it’s just as much his fault that they’re going at each other again, but he can’t help the sour way the words drop down his tongue, hot and molten. “You fuck me then sneak out, then open up and stay over, then weeks pass and you don’t say anything, don’t even act interested in what I’m doing, and now you show up and can’t seem to grasp why I might be a bit tense to see you?” 

“You can’t just bottle this up then throw it at me,” Harry says, and his teeth are bared, Louis distantly wonders if he does it on purpose. “I told you first thing that I wouldn’t always be around. And I stayed when you asked me to - that wasn’t part of our arrangement.” 

“Do you have other ‘arrangements’ going on too, then?” Louis demands, suddenly hyperaware of how defensive his posture has become, hands balled to fists and stepping towards Harry, aggression threaded through his body that contradicts his size. “If this is just some cheap lay for you then surely you have other places to sneak off to, other people who aren’t this much of a hassle!” 

“I barely have time for you,” Harry seethes back, “though I’m sure you’ve had plenty in between.”  
“I haven’t,” Louis says through his teeth, a second later wondering why he’s said it so readily, why Harry even asked, if this is jealousy or a competition. 

“Please,” Harry’s scoffing before he has the time to draw a conclusion. “I waited my turn while you flirted around with those other two - “ A jolt of anger burns through Louis’ spinal cord, and his knuckles press white under his skin. 

“Like I’m some fucking carnival ride - and why do you seem so fixed on the notion that I was involved with them? Because I wasn’t!” 

“Don’t pretend like I wasn’t some distraction when the artist decided he was done playing with you,” Harry snaps, a stumble on a tightrope made of patience and virtue.  
“That isn’t _why_ \- and that wasn't an invitation for you to play with me instead!” Louis says back, and his voice is escalating, ready to become a shout.

“You wouldn’t have hesitated if he had wanted you,” there’s a defensive net built up around Harry’s mouth, suffocating, contaminating the words flung out of it.

“What does it matter if I would have or not? You’re the one who got me and you don’t want me either!” Harry stills. There’s something quiet in his eyes, and Louis looks away from him, knowing that if he recognized it as pity the tears would spike up and blur his vision, and it would be a struggle to hold them back. 

 

Harry doesn’t confirm it, doesn’t deny it either, and his silence has a sting to it, the taste of salt and bile lodging into a cluster at the back of Louis’ mouth.

 

“God...you make me feel crazy...sometimes I think I...” something unforgivable sits implied in Louis’ hesitation, “and then you always _leave,_ you always throw something in my face, and it just feels like I haven’t affected you at all.” He feels as if he’s suddenly gone hoarse, tongue suddenly gone dry and limp inside his mouth. 

He looks up to see Harry’s eyes ravishing his face, flickering, and his dead tongue curls around his dying teeth. 

“Last time...or the time before that, god it all runs together...” Louis’ words are running together now too, watered down as he loses his spark under the pale light of Harry’s eyes. “It felt like something more than just an ‘arrangement...’ I’m so sure you felt it too, and then you just...left.” Louis’ voice fades under the attention from the eyes quietly fixed on him. _‘Again,’_ sits unsaid on his arid tongue, and in the air around them.

“I rehearse early.” 

 

Harry is velvet over metal, and Louis is caught on the tracks, satin bound and struggling.

 

“Do you rehearse early tomorrow?” Louis carefully settles his eyes between Harry and the door. There’s barely a big enough gap now for them to fix on. 

“Yes.” The word is a sigh breathed through but not cutting the tension. 

“But you still came.” His teeth feel too widely spaced as he says it. Harry doesn’t answer this time, just exhales thinly, doesn’t meet his eye.

 

“You don’t have to stay. But please don’t fake it,” Louis says, and his voice has lost every inch of spite and nails it had been holding on to. “You can go, if you want to,” and he knows he wants to, so he turns away, wondering if he can get far enough away so that he won’t have to hear the door close. 

 

He makes it to the edge of the hall when a soft pressure appears on his upper arm, and his bones do their best to jump through his skin. His feet turn him around before he has the time to blink away his shock.

There’s something fierce and fluid shining in Harry’s eyes, and Louis can’t pinpoint it as lust or anguish. The grip on his arm is limp and stodgy, and he wants it gone, so he shakes it off, turning in the process to face him. 

 

“I’m not faking it, Louis,” and Louis isn’t ready for this quicksilver whisper, or the way Harry dips his chin down to step closer. 

If there’s more Harry had planned to say, Louis doesn’t wait for it, placing his hands on Harry’s chest, and standing up on his toes.

 

The kiss is delicate, and Harry’s fingers are gentle and dusting like butterfly wings up Louis’ sides. 

The fragility gives Louis whiplash, and it’s not until Harry’s inside him, knuckle deep with three fingers, his other hand striking flat and burning slaps to the backs of his thighs with every whine and movement that it starts to make sense again. 

 

Desperation has burrowed its way into Louis’ skin, and he wants it out. Sweat is pushing out of his pores, and he’s pushing back on Harry’s fingers, wild and scrambling and disobeying his orders to _stay still!_ because it’s still not enough. 

 

Harry fucks him with one hand wrapped in a vice grip around his cock, forbidding him from coming, and it’s brutal, violent, and Louis’ body is wracked and straining as Harry coos vile and syrupy things in his ear. 

 

Louis is flipped over and roughly yanked down the bed as Harry peels off the condom and finishes himself, coming in hot bursts that catch on Louis’ chin and spatter up his face as he gasps. 

 

He’s dazed and aching, only registering that Harry’s slid his fingers back in by the way his body’s rocking with the motion of it. His breathing turns pale and shallow as Harry’s hands carry him to the edge, only to clamp down around his cock and slow to a torturous pace. 

 

It happens another three times before a thin scream begins funneling its way out of his throat, like screeching tires. The skin beneath his eyes is stinging and sensitive, and he’s crying out, and begging, hands moving in silent spasms, trying to reach out.

But all Harry does is remove both his hands to pin Louis’ arms to his sides, and lean in to nip at his neck, reminding him in a low and singing voice to stay quiet and behave. 

 

And he wants to, even through the glaze that’s keeping him from seeing straight, or taking stable breaths. Wants to silence the noises writhing and hiccupping their way out of his mouth, wants to be good and be praised, but he disintegrates as Harry slides down his body, pries him open with both hands and worms his tongue inside.

Louis screams weakly, and his body tries to jerk up and away and into the hot push of muscle, but his effort is powerless, and all he can do is squirm feebly and cry. A finger joins Harry’s tongue, and then a second, combined and purposeful as they push up against Louis’ prostate, teasing, cruel brushes that wrench the tears from his ducts. A barely-there pressure that builds and fades, ruined and saved by inconsistent nips and licks to his rim and inner thighs. 

Louis’ mind is gone, his body fueled by twitches and convulsions, and small, helpless sounds that Harry laps up, urges on. 

Four sharp jabs, one after the other, have Louis moaning out a pained noise, something feral and exhausted, and Harry runs a hand up through the sweat and shakes of Louis’ muscles to rub comfortingly over his cock. 

 

It’s too much, Louis’ nerves are in ribbons, and a word stutters past his lips. Harry’s hands morph from where they’re glued to his skin, turn from unforgiving to instantly soothing and safe. His body drops and folds around to Louis’ side, every inch of his body suddenly right there, steady and reassuring. 

“Alright, baby, it’s alright, you’re okay...I’m here, tell me what you need,” and his fingers come sliding up to the pane of Louis’ chest.  
Louis is a mess of tears and damp babbles in response, his body trying to curl inward and cling to Harry simultaneously. Harry allows it, drawing him into his arms, and sliding a hand down the grease and tremor of his back. 

“Do we need to stop?” Fingers come up to rake softly through the knots in Louis’ hair. “Should we have you come now? Let me know.” Harry’s voice comes to Louis underwater, and billowing like cuts of silk.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpers, and it’s eaten by brine and indecipherable, but Harry hears it.  
“Hush, baby, there’s nothing to be sorry for,” and his arms tighten around Louis in an all-encompassing hold. “What do you need? What will make it all better?”  
And all Louis can do is shake his head, bury his face into the crook of Harry’s neck, his body still trying to wriggle closer, but he’s paralyzed, petrified. 

 

Harry’s hands encircle his body as it rolls and quivers, pores open and wet, and Harry holds him, rocks him gently, draws a hand up to gently knead the ache and chaos from his shoulders. He whispers feathered words and presses his lips to Louis’ scalp, slow dances their bodies together, and feels Louis come against his stomach, shake and tremble through the aftermath. 

 

* * *

 

Louis’ eyes feel red-rimmed and swollen as they open, try to blink, and realize he’s alone beneath the sheets that are wrinkled and written with dried stains. His heart pushes a choked sound from past his lips, lungs fanning out and collapsing before he can pick up on the warmth from the other side of the mattress, or the sound from down the hall that woke him. 

 

Harry slips back into the room in time to find Louis barely upright and drawing in uneven breaths, shoulders curving upwards, tears welling to match the clouds outside the window. 

“Oh, no, Lou, it’s alright, I’m here,” Harry murmurs, the morning rasp inflecting noticeably as he hurries over to sit on the edge of the bed, ease a glass of water down onto the nightstand and pull an arm around Louis’ neck. 

 

Louis’ head has lost some of the fog, regained some strength over the events of the night, and it’s clear enough to feel a mild type of mortification bubble up as he clasps his arms around Harry, shuddering out his breaths.

“I’m sorry, I just..I thought you’d gone again, and everything’s still so...” Harry hums, and the sound reverberates through Louis’ chest, a calming wave. 

“It’s all right,” he says, and his hand is warm against Louis’ back. “Here,” he draws back to reach for and hand Louis the glass of water, overlapping his hands to steady it as it travels up to reach Louis’ lips, parted and lit with a faint tremble. 

He drinks messily, somehow manages to swallow, and Harry bats away the stray drops that trickle down his chin. Harry’s clothed, at least partially, leaning in towards Louis in a tee shirt and pants, and it sends a bead of clarity rolling down his spine, clueing in to his own exposure, and his skin breaks out in goosebumps at the realization of his naked vulnerability.

 

It’s different now, being naked in front of him, and Louis clumsily pulls the blanket up to cover himself. It’s a bashful movement that Harry’s eyes catch, and seem to cherish, as he inches closer, inspecting.

Harry’s hands slide down Louis’ bare sides, staking claim and charting the territory, as if to confirm that he’s still in one piece.

It’s not rough, and it’s not jarring, but it’s enough to make Louis ball a handful of the bedsheets into his mouth, and chew down on the edges wetly.

 

Harry’s hands get lower, and scoop under, hauling him haphazardly into his lap, where he makes no effort to steady himself, but sags against the solid press of Harry’s chest. They sway together as the fog lifts from Louis’ mind. He’s sad to see it go. 

“Don’t you have rehearsals soon?” Louis mumbles into the sheets. He doesn’t miss the way Harry’s body darts one step closer to rigid. 

“Yes,” is his simple reply, and Louis knows it means he’s leaving soon, can’t seem to find the words to make him stay. 

 

He showers before he leaves, pulls Louis in with him, and washes the grime and handprints from their bodies. Louis keeps his head down, eyes closed as the water runs down his face, pure. 

It’s colder than he’s ever run the taps, and he nestles in closer to steal heat from Harry’s body, pressing against the ripple of his marbled state. He feels simple, fighting hard to keep reason and rationality from slipping in and complicating. 

Harry is tender and thorough with him, reassuring and reaffirming that he’s just fine, with the swirls of his fingerprints etching new and wondrous designs over Louis’ skin. 

 

Louis stays small and naked while Harry dresses, holding a towel under his chin. He follows him to the door, bare feet soft and cold against the tiles. 

A hand on the doorknob, Harry turns back, hesitation and a strange shade of restraint colouring his eyes. He finally edges in, a smooth downward swoop to capture Louis’ lips, briefly, fleetingly, touches a soft ‘goodbye’ with his fingers against Louis’ thigh, before slipping out the door and into the world. 

 

When he’s gone, Louis can still feel the lines and whirls tracing his bones, running along his veins.

 

He keeps the afternoon to himself, choosing to stay in bed, and catch up to sleep if he can run fast enough. 

 

Reality finally rouses him, responsibility a stern hand that pulls him upright, pats the dust from his shoulders and the cobwebs from his brain. 

He dresses, washes up some stray dishes in the kitchen, listens to the rain outside. It doesn’t sound formidable, just a faint pattering providing a small soundtrack to his movements. 

 

Making his way back to the bedroom, he stalls in the doorway, taking in the way his bed looks, duvet cast to the bottom and pillows indented on both sides. It looks easy, and Louis wonders when it stopped looking like a crime scene.

Peeling the sheets from the mattress, his eyes get stuck in the scaled patterns the crusted stains have invented. He feels childlike and scatter-brained, one step behind as his fingers fumble one step ahead.


	22. Chapter 22

Days pass quickly, moving faster to stay warm as the sun distances itself. 

With the deadline almost within reach, Louis’ training intensifies, drills merciless and matches extended.  
Louis throws his heart, hot and red, into it. His legs become wires and gears, a machine made for this, and his blood soars and sings through his body, alive with adrenaline. Something slowcooking inside him seems to be a heartbeat away from a boil, and his teammates are infected with it too. They swarm, rabid and in rut, and Louis’ surprised there isn’t an audible click in moments like this where every motion, every muscle is perfectly in place. Even the coaches on the sidelines seem uplifted, and anticipation and excitement run rampant. 

 

Louis can barely swallow through the excitement, texting nearly everyone in his contacts, gushing and bubbly. He specifically adds in his new scheduling to Harry, who replies with his own. 

There’s barely anything to line up between them, and their scarce meetings consist of fast exchanges that drool into exhausted kisses.

One night Harry mentions offhandedly that he’s going back to London for his next featured performance, tracing fond patterns in the drying sweat on Louis’ stomach. He’s half asleep, and demands to be kissed, curls around him to ensure he stays the night, and they fall into sleep. 

 

There’s no sign or sound from Harry after that, but Louis barely dwells on it, and fills his days with a countdown to the tour, with nothing but a stretch of winter keeping it at bay. Harry’s silence fades to a white noise that only speaks up softly during the nights, in the small and sleepless patches. 

All he knows is training and running, the burn in his legs spreading to wildfire in his chest. The heat spreads like a rash and he feels lit up, amplified. 

 

Leaving the complex, the highlights turn into a slow wind, and outside, underneath, there seems to be a shifting ground, settling into winter. 

 

* * *

 

Louis wakes from a nap, shoulders griping at the hard press of his couch, bleary and struggling to pinpoint what woke him. 

He finally clues in that his phone is ringing, and something is spiking its way up his spine, making it feel gilled and clam-like.

 

“Do you have time to meet up today?” And he bats at his crusted eyes, smiling at the harsh purr of Harry’s voice.

“Yeah, sure. You’re back?” Louis asks. His voice sounds diced and seasoned. It hits him a beat too late that it’s a very redundant question. 

“I’m at the studio. I have to be back at the dance hall in an hour.” The words seem to break and skitter off before they reach Louis’ ears, and he catches himself digging his nails into the fabric of his jeans. “Will you meet me?” Harry’s voice is a quiet roar through the phone. 

“‘Course,” Louis says, stretching out a groan as he sits up. There’s a pause, a short exhale on the other end, before Harry hangs up without saying more.

He sends a text before rising to get ready, _‘wouldn’t it be easier for you to just come to mine?’_

Louis showers, dresses, and there’s a coil of unease winding and tightening in his stomach as he finds his message read but unanswered.

_‘Just meet me outside the auditorium,’_ his phone buzzes as he’s on his way, and some scaly kind of finality unfolds over his shoulders. He tries to shake it as he walks, but it’s thick and clinging.

 

* * *

 

Stepping around the walls of the art studio, the delicate exterior feels like a betrayal. Louis hates how simple it appears, how naive when just outside it’s caked in dirtiness, a dumpster nestled in the corner, gritty cracks in the ground, and stones beneath his shoes. 

Harry’s profile is shadowed when Louis rounds the bend to see him standing there. He looks formidable, standing amid the dust and strangled plants doing their best to slither upward through the cracks. Twisted metal and wiring, nothing but muscle and regiment and storm clouds sitting behind his eyes. Pure intimidation, but Louis digs his fingernails in and peels off the hollow guise he’s hiding beneath. 

It comes away like sunburnt skin. 

 

Louis’ sure he knows what’s coming, and feeling grips his legs and invades his stomach, every instinct telling him to flee, as if faced with a monster.

And just as innately, the simple truth of knowing there’s nothing monstrous about Harry at all, maybe a little air of sadness, but nothing at all threatening. 

 

Harry stands there like a tower, doesn’t make a move to come towards him, and Louis feels small. Not quite worthless, not yet, but the uneasiness in his stomach springs out and begins to invade his chest cavity. 

Water is welling up beneath his skin, and it’s an effort to keep his organs dry and bones from drowning. 

 

“Hi,” and his teeth butcher the word. “How are you?” Louis already feels like wincing, trying to speak through this mouthful of glass, delicate and ruthless shards embedding themselves in his throat, where his heart seems to have taken residence.

“Fine.” It’s clipped, like the wings of a bird that never learned to fly. Louis wants to fly, frantic and feathered, to bury his head in the sand. 

“So...” Louis tries, worming his tongue around his teeth, searching for words. “Tell me about London?” It’s a request, a small suggestion, and Harry shifts a foot through the cigarette butts at his feet. 

“London was fine.”  
“Harry,” Louis needles, crossing his arms. 

“It went well. It ought to have, been in the studio long enough...” there’s a quick laugh thrown in after his words, and Louis’ never heard a tenser sound. 

“Yeah...feels like all I know is training these days.” Louis listens to the soft, airy pitch of his own voice. It sounds too worn to count as anxious, but he doesn’t let the hope die on his tongue. Harry seems to latch on to his words, and he nods along.

“Exactly...” Louis’ patient as he watches Harry search for words, his eyes light and flicking over Louis’.

“And while this has been fun...” something cold jumps in Louis’ stomach, because this sounds too much like a dismissal, a brush off and he shrinks and stiffens, palms going cool. “Things are going to have to wind down. My schedule is filling up and I need a more stable routine. Sorry, but our patterns are too irregular to line up anymore.” 

“Yeah, of course,” Louis says, words greased and slipping easily past his tongue. “Just let me know when you’ve got a bit of down time, we’ll work something around practices.”

“I don’t think so.” It’s curt and black, and so unlike the voice Louis’ learned to listen for. 

Harry’s eyes are all over him, blocked and searching for something. Louis doesn’t know what, doesn’t know how to pick it out while his stomach is frantic and flipping like this. 

“What, ever?” His words sound hollow, shaken, and he doesn’t bother trying to keep the water from spilling out inside. It feels inevitable.

“It’s just not going to work out,” Harry says, and there’s stiffness there in his voice, and his body. 

“Just like that, you don’t want to see me again?” Something lodges in Louis’ throat, tiny hands eager to strangle. 

“I’ve got to focus on my career.” It’s as brisk as the air circling them, and stirring up tiny pieces of debris. “But it was nice for the time being.” 

“You’re really breaking up with me beside a dumpster?” Louis isn’t sure if he was aiming to be funny, but it comes out thin and washed out, a stitch away from disintegration.

“We were never really together...” The words reach Louis like a slap, colouring him red, and through the sting he isn’t able to determine if Harry is cutting him down or muttering to himself. He isn’t sure it’s convincing either of them. 

“That stopped being true a while ago, and you know it,” he says, words polished and wet, ribs beginning to feel a bit too tight. 

“It’s over, Lou, whatever it was.” The nickname hurts more held in this dead tone, rigor mortis seizing Harry’s tongue and cooling the air between them. Louis breathes out, watches the air thicken and fade.

“Don’t tell me it hasn’t meant anything to you...” Harry shifts his weight and doesn’t deny anything, stoic and staring. “...maybe at first, but there’s something, there’s got to be _something_ else to it...” Harry looks around uneasily, as if looking for witnesses, or an escape route.

“Stop, Louis. Just leave it.” There’s a tremble to his words and Louis’ fingers that doesn’t seem to be able to invade his voice, leathery and pitch black. Louis’ sure it’s forced, and isn’t sure of anything else. 

“I don’t want to leave it! Every time we’re together - and don’t lie to me! - there’s something more than some convenient fling...” His eyes, throat, veins are all welling up but he glares at Harry, dares him to deny it. “Then you just switch off and act like _this,_ and I feel like I’m going crazy! I’m pretty fucking low maintenance, Harry, you could just say we can try to meet up every few weeks, and I’d be _fine_ with that, you _know_ that!” Harry’s completely rigid now, blending in to the brick wall, and the slime and dust at their feet. 

Louis lets the cold air wash over him, wills it to dry up the tears that have been building up and huddling together over his waterline. 

“Why are you just cutting me off?” Harry’s wordless, eyes circling the empty space they’re in. “The only things that would make sense is that you don’t want me anymore, or you’re afraid of something.”  
Louis didn’t think it was possible, but Harry stiffens further at the accusation.

“Then I don’t want you anymore.” It’s a blatant lie, Louis’ sure of it, but it hurts the same, reaches down his throat and squeezes. Something pops, starts leaking, and Louis feels the first wet trail line its way down his face.

“Next you’re going to say you never wanted me, right?” He chases it with a laugh, damp and humourless. 

Harry shrugs. Louis watches the effort he has to put into it. 

“You keep pretending like you don’t care, like I don’t affect you, and half the time I believe it, but why else would we have kept this up?” He’s crying now, tears slipping down and burning hot shame down his face. “You could have just dropped me after the first time, the second time. You wouldn’t have waited this long if there was nothing there.” 

Another silence threatens to stretch obscenely, spread over between them, so Louis draws in a breath, and it’s ragged and wet and Harry looks like he’s about to cut in and stop him, so he keeps going, words coming fast and hard and terrifying out of his mouth.

“And I think I’m falling in love with you, and you’re just standing there, you’re giving me nothing, making me second guess everything I’ve ever thought about you, please, Harry, just say something, just give me _something!”_ He disintegrates into sobs, raw and ugly, and Harry looks ready to bolt, eyes wider than he’s ever seen them, hands fallen lifeless to his sides.

 

The silence is filled with the deafening sound hair makes when it’s pulled out at the root.

 

“I have rehearsal today.” Harry’s words are blunt and cutting, like knives dulled down.

_“What?”_ Louis’ voice is pleading, confusion and some pale sister of grief moulding his face, wet and pasty.

“I’m always going to have rehearsals.” There’s something else behind the dulled knives, ground down to stubs against a wet stone. Dry ice and paper cuts. “It doesn’t stop. I can’t make it stop. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I have to do...there isn’t room for you in this.”

Louis bites down hard on his lower lip to try and stop its quaking. He can barely see Harry in front of him, all shimmering and swimming in saltwater. He barely wants to.

“There’s no way to get anything you want out of this. We’re too different, we’re -”  
“Don’t say we’re from two different worlds, don’t say some clichéd shit like that, Harry it’s so fucked up, not from you,” Louis cuts in, a desperate laugh swallowing his tongue. He can feel himself drowning in it.

“The fact that we’ve crossed over at all is in itself miraculous,” Harry says. 

Louis wants to cut the poetry out of his words, wants to pick the eloquence out from between his teeth, to tear up each syllable into one thousand pieces, cast them away like ashes. 

“All you’ve ever done is push yourself to get where you are.” Louis’ eyelashes are stuck together, and through fractured vision he watches the sway of Harry’s body blurring before him. The tense line of his shoulders, the trigger in his legs.

“Do you want me to ask you to give that up? Find some other way to pass the time while you wait for me to come back from shows, from all that rehearsing? You want me to fuck it all up just to make room for you?”

Louis’ sobs are quiet now, shoulders jerking up and caving in like he’s heaving up something toxic that’s rotting him out from the inside. 

Harry isn’t looking at him. He’s looking past him, at the empty choking air to his side.

“Do you want to ask that of me?” It’s not a question, not really. Harry’s voice has something deadly in it too, like all the poison forcing its way out of Louis’ guts and stomach, clawing up his esophagus is leeching into him, black and cursing.

“I practice for nine hours every day.” Louis doesn’t care, doesn’t want to hear it, isn’t capable of hearing anything else. “I’m finally where I’ve worked to get since I was a kid. The last time this didn’t take up more than half of everything I did, I was still learning to read. This is what I’ve always wanted.” 

Louis’ making strangled sounds, wishing he wasn’t relating, even through the sheet metal crushing his ribcage inwards. 

“If you take that away from me I’ll have a hole ripped through the centre of my life. And you won’t be able to fill it. There’s no amount of love, or fucking, that can take the place of this.” 

 

He’s making too much sense, and Louis hates him for it. A quiet wave lapses in, and the grey skies feel low and crushing. 

 

Louis finally breaks the silence, finds his throat hollow and lined with seaweed.

“Just tell me you’ve fallen too...” _and if you haven’t then why are we both down here in the dirt.._ It sits on his lips, pink as a freshly healed wound, a blush. But he can’t bring it further than that. He blames the weight of the unspoken words for the way his bottom lip shakes. He bites it, cuts the vulnerability down and holds it between his teeth.  
It still shakes.

He pries his eyes up from the grunge, finds Harry’s eyes and wishes he hadn’t. They’re a pale grey to match the sky, both wet and promising rain. His answer is waiting for him there, and somehow it’s worse knowing. 

 

“I’m sorry, Louis,” his name is barely whispered. “I can’t change. And I don’t want you to.” There’s a pause that feels a lifetime long, brimming with wet sounds torn from Louis’ lungs and writhing, disemboweled on the ground. “I shouldn’t have agreed to in the first place. I’m sorry I put you through this -”

“I’m not some pathetic, needy little sub that falls in love with everyone that takes me under, I’m not!” Louis cries, and Harry flinches, shaking his head as if to keep the words from reaching him, holes burnt through syllables from the acid running lines down Louis’ cheeks.

Harry stands, silent and motionless and Louis feels like screaming, to dispel the seawater from his mouth and lungs. Harry says nothing, doesn’t need to say anything, as they’re both standing at the bottom of something dark and fathomless.  
Louis wonders if it’s even escapable.

He feels the water creeping in again, helpless to let it wash over him. 

 

Seeing constellations in the ash and stones at his feet, eyes starry as the lashes blink, wet, and his vision becomes a galaxy.  
And deeper, he feels that it might be collapsing. 

 

Again, his mind is drawn to how dirty the ground is outside the studio, the hidden side of filth hiding behind the poetry and beauty and grace inside, and Louis thinks of ballet toes. 

 

“In another life, maybe.” Harry’s voice is quiet chaos. The roar of the ocean, held captive in a seashell. All the power of the sea, inaudible at arm’s length.  
“Right,” Louis feels a lump in his throat, all hair and gnashing teeth, a tumour swelling inside. He swallows, pushing it down, and imagines it eating out his heart. “Right, maybe if we were different people.” Harry looks away as his voice catches.

 

Louis takes a faltering step forwards, presses his side against the wall for support, body feeling lifeless. He looks up to find Harry’s eyes washing over his face, coming to rest hesitantly over his lips, before flying back up to meet Louis’.

 

“You want to...just do it, Harry.” His voice carries the exhaustion of being dried up, spent. 

Harry’s eyes flick down, a nervous stutter that capture Louis’ lips in one thousand faded polaroids. Harry’s hands jump at his sides, freeze, draw back stiffly. There is no poetry in the movement, and his skin looks raw, chapped by the cold and pink to match. Louis thinks it might be the first time his body’s truly betrayed him, and he catches another glimpse of the paleness inside, the soft underbelly. It’s too much of a farewell to feel anything but sorrow at the sight. 

 

Harry moves in and Louis wants to tell him that that timid colour doesn’t look good on him. He wants to get back to snapping, to defensive claws, anything but this grey desperation, fading into just grey.

 

They kiss like wet tires over asphalt. And there’s a bend in the road, a collision coming and Louis pulls back before regret registers on the back of his tongue, sweet and putrid.

There’s a faraway sound of screeching rubber and a windshield exploding, shattering into two million pieces. Everything sounds underwater once it’s finished breaking. 

 

“I wish...” Harry’s voice breaks sharply, low and halted. 

 

Silence wraps them up in sealed plastic and oxygen masks.

 

A lifetime or two go by as time is wasted over wishes.

 

Louis has long run dry as it passes, and the tide pulls out. Gasping creatures twist and writhe on the ground, lungless and spineless.

 

They suffocate. 

 

Through the blur Louis looks down, sees the stones and grit collecting in the cracks, thinks of sand, and dust, all the tiny pieces that used to be a part of something big, and solid, so much that the thought of it ever breaking, weathering down was unthinkable.

Tiny pieces now powerless to the pull of the tide.


	23. Chapter 23

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	24. Chapter 24

Leaves shrivel, trees undress. 

 

Winter’s roots expand and crack foundations. 

 

Louis’ apartment is too big again, and nothing has changed.

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	25. Chapter 25

It’s a little too easy to ignore all the things that feel like Harry. 

Grace and piano keys, and that quiet breath against the back of his neck, all the things that were never there before, and all he wants is to ease back into something.

The lack is somehow more of a reminder, whispering in a deadly honest voice that Harry would never find a place in Louis’ life, because none of the things he was made of have ever had a home amid all the things that Louis is made of. 

All the jagged pieces, every broken bit so akin yet so unmatchable, unable to form their way around each other when the driving force of the ocean was here between them, instead of stirring them closer, creating new and impossible colours. 

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	26. Chapter 26

Winter draws out, and just when Louis starts to think it’ll never end, that he’ll be grey and cold forever, spring blossoms, and the touring starts.

 

The size of the crowds catch his heart in his throat, holds it steady, and it helps to forget it’s hurting. 

 

The pace is relentless, and it’s not long before the bugs start buzzing in his head again. He tries to tell himself he’s only craving the relief of a quiet mind, and soon he finds that leaping headfirst into matches bruises him well enough. There’s a fierce edge of competition that he isn’t used to, and the fangs and hostility of the other sides leaves him shredded and panting, and he lets himself pretend. 

 

And they’re winning. He’s a part of something big - a vital part it’s starting to seem. 

 

He doesn’t miss the emptiness of his apartment, or the trivial drag of practices, but other things creep in that he does miss. Multi-legged things, thoughts he banishes, and names homesickness. It’s a poor fit but it covers the exposed pieces. The piping and copper wires.

 

The sting of it is he knows Harry was right. There isn’t room, isn’t time for something else amid the hurricane of arenas and tour buses and hotel rooms. 

It doesn’t stop the burn from peeling at his skin, but it does its best to soothe it when he’s alone, red and angry. 

 

He finds other ways to fall asleep. Counting sheep, and grains of sand.

 

Some nights he runs out. 

 

But even still, even in the distances between the sleepless hours, he can’t stop him from weaving across his dreams like an afterthought, light and pale.  
These dreams don’t come often, but when they do, Louis holds them close in clandestine glimpses.

The mornings after the nights he visits are always light and pale too, a washed out colour that Louis doesn’t like to think about. 

 

Can’t help but to think about. 

 

A washed out and hollow colour that’s accustomed to sitting in the socket holes of a skull. 

And there’s never been _emptiness_ behind those eyes, just malice and a viciousness that Louis’ slowly learning never meant to inflict pain upon others, but served as a warning to stay away, pleading with them not to get involved. Protecting against heartache on both ends. Displaying fragility in the other way he knew how.

 

It’s these morning-after unravelling thoughts that Louis wants gone. The understanding, the empathy that digs barbs the deepest into his skin, and he takes his time in pulling them out, letting the tremble guide his fingers as they do their shaking best to cleanse.

 

In these still and silent moments, he catches himself praying for a vagrant heart to come and sit inside his chest, take the place of this struggling creature, wings made of dust that beat so frailly against their cage, searching for the flame.


	27. Chapter 27

Louis stops in at a tattoo parlour when he finds a moment to breathe between matches. The words have been stuck in his head, a repeated line in an old song, trapped in the confines of his mind, and the bite of it being locked beneath his skin feels right in place.

 

_‘far away,’_ and he tells himself it’s the distance between his family, all the travel, all the space between where he stands, and everything he’s known. 

 

But the ink nags at him at night, an itch beneath his skin, and the letters twist and deform into something that’s a little less of a phrase, and a little more like a name.

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	28. Chapter 28

Spring finally shakes winter loose, blooms and songbirds its way towards summer.

 

Liam publishes his final project in the weeks between, all polished and uploaded to the academy’s art site. 

 

Louis feels it’s a cheap way to find out; a link posted to a public page, but it’s not enough to deter him from opening it.

 

There’s a strange jolt, a missed step on the stairs when he sees himself in it, and he imagines he can still feel the chill of the open window as he watches the breeze skate over his skin on the screen.

 

A season stands between it all, and Louis wonders if he’s still the same person, wonders how to tell, and if he even still wants to, wants to be. 

 

It’s an invertebrate feeling. 

 

After the interviews, the lapses of Zayn drawing, the stillness of the models captured in the white studio, the credits pass over a soft piano ballad. But the screen doesn’t blacken. Instead there is a silent walkthrough of a gallery, where each of the pieces is mounted on plain walls.

One is a crumbled figure, legs wrapped in pale fabric, and bent, splayed to the sides. The head is down, face not visible, forehead pressed to the floor in prayer. The angle is grotesque - all rolling back muscle, tendons pulled tight in quiet screams. A paper doll, bent and mashed and fallen. The sun surrounds the figure in pale lines. 

Louis thinks it looks featherlight. 

Fragile, even.

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	29. Chapter 29

It feels wrong to deny all thoughts of Harry, and Louis lets himself check up on him now and then, when the ache doesn’t feel quite so fresh, beating, bludgeoned, through his ribs. 

 

London’s waiting, through the slush and gristle winter left behind, and Harry’s name is showcased, headlined, begged and bragged by the opera house, and it’s too easy to ignore the offers on seats, the allure of the orchestra. 

 

He buys tickets for the last performance of the spring show, seats as close to the stage as he can manage, after debating hiding in the back, or lurking pressed against the walls. Finally he decides he wants to be up where the flowers get thrown. 

 

 

He takes his time to enjoy the scenery. 

 

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	30. Chapter 30

He’s close, close enough to be overwhelmed by the flourish of costumes, and scent of rose petals. 

 

There’s a distraction, a blotched out line, a string of words, along the wrist of the dancer, the only dancer, really. 

 

Stage makeup, and the quick twists and whirls of his hand make it impossible to make out. 

 

He later finds out, after the flowers have long since wilted and dried, the lights have dimmed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_I can’t change._

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/neurtsy


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